Hi CCers hoping someone can help me, my daughter has requested I make her BFF a basketball cake and it has to be life size

The only bowl I have tha comes close in size is an elcheapo aluminium mixing bowl that I don't think would stand up to baking in the oven.

Otherwise i was thinking along the lines of trying my hand at carving it, but where to start

As a home baker this will be the biggest cake I have ever attempted and need as much help as I can get

I'm afraid that if you try to carve it, you'll never get it perfectly round and smooth... but maybe someone else has tried that and can help you with that.

Elcheapo aluminum mixing bowl might serve your purpose though. I've heard people bake cakes even in cans.

I do remember watching this video, though. Be patient, it's in Spanish, but 3 minutes into the conversation, Marcela Capó (one of the best cake designers in Argentina) starts working on a basketball cake. You might get some ideas on how to do a thing or two. (It's one of her videos from her old TV program in Argentina.)

http://www.marcelacapo.com/video/programa%2026%207.wmv

Good luck!

I saw a cake show where they a basketball but the bottom half was styrofoam. Something about it not being structurally sound if it's all cake. HTH!

I used a glass bowl for a cherry cake I did(it's under my pics...the giant cherries)..each cherry was about 8" high and they were both all cake...i just stacked each one and used a cake board and dowels in between each half...i hope this helps...

you could either use a pyrix bowl or a heavey cast steel one..
i happened to have a steel one i borrowwed from my mother to make a ball if you check the wedding cake i made the bottom layer is a ball made from sandwitching 2 cakes .. just make sure u dowl the bottom tier to support the top half. cause it could get too heavy. and another thing is that the base of the pan is not completly round. which was fine with me cause i needed to stack cakes on top of each other anyway but for your case u might just want to add more buttercream to the top to make it look round. ohh and i lifted my cake up a little with styrofoam to shoe the round shape..