Mickey Mantle's Birthday and Natural Baseball Cake Brainstorming

It's Mickey Mantle's birthday and in celebration I am featuring my favorite Mickey Mantle items on Etsy! This one above is a "MICKEY MANTLE Limited Edition Pop Art Print (Only 25 Made)" by Pet Prints.


This is the collector's dream: a "1957 MICKEY MANTLE TOPPS BASEBALL CARD" listed for $1,150.00 by Joe's Books and Things.


Here is a Mickey Mantle item from my shop! This is a collector's figurine titled "Starting Lineup New York Yankees Mickey Mantle 1997 Collectible" by myself: Eco-Friendly Freckles.


Wow, what a attractive and thoughtful gift for a Mickey Mantle fan! These "New York Yankees Mickey Mantle Cuff Links" are created by Blink Photo.


Amazing! This is a very stunning work of art titled "Custom Vintage Style Baseball Painting" by Avery Marie and Me Creations.

Also, in celebration of Mickey Mantle's birthday, I am going to share some of my brainstorming ideas for making an all-natural baseball themed birthday cake since I have a few baseball fans in my family...one of these days I might make one of these cute cakes with healthy/organic ingredients of course.


I really like this cake; having a baseball and a bat gives the cake a complete and thorough look. I am not a big fan of the look of the field bases, but I really like the ball and bat cakes. In making the bat I would use a rectangular shaped cake pan and carve out the shape of a baseball bat with a kitchen knife. To achieve the look of real wood for the bat naturally, I am considering using an all-natural yellow food coloring (like turmeric) and maybe making some natural-wood looking dark lines with cocoa powder mixed in the icing.

For the baseball itself, I am thinking about making a round "bowl cake" and coating it with a thick layer of white icing and then using the paper technique (where you take a clean/new piece of paper and rub the edge of it over the entire cake making the frosting have a smooth/flat effect with slight noticeable lines that look very neat); then making a highly concentrated all-natural red dye with maybe beet powder, red cabbage extract, and natural red plant-based food coloring for the red stitch lines on the baseball (this needs to be highly concentrated to avoid the chance of it turning out pink...ha ha, which isn't very "boyish").


I LOVE this cake! To create this baseball mitt cake naturally instead of using chocolate fondant (which was used to create this pristine looking cake), I would use a dark cocoa frosting again and do the paper technique, as mentioned above, to form the smooth surface and then go over the cake with a piping bag and a different shade of brown frosting to make the outline of the mitt and create the weaved effect of the catching section of the glove. The cake pan I would use for this cake would either be square of round and then I could carve out the shape of the mitt with a kitchen knife (if I selected a round pan there probably wouldn't be too much carving to do). The baseball on this cake is perfectly round! That might be a little difficult to create without a specific cake pan in the shape of a ball...I might try using two small round baking bowls and putting the two cakes to form a ball; or I might make this small cake from a cupcake or just one small bowl to create baseball-like cake (either way would be cute). Once again, I would use white icing, the paper technique, and highly concentrated natural red food coloring for the red stitch on the ball.

If you would like to see this paper technique demonstrated on a cake to form a smooth surface on the icing (I think it almost makes the icing look as smooth as fondant), you can view this video for making a barbie doll cake...this video also has some other great cake decorating tips!