3D Football Helmet Cake Full Step-By-Step Photo Tutorial


It’s almost time for the biggest football game of the year in the US, and you might want to make a fun football helmet cake.

This step-by-step tutorial will help you do it, and it’s not that hard even for beginners.


football helmet cake

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Materials needed.

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Two 8” round cakes
One 9” round cake
One 7” round cake
Icing for between the layers and to cover the cake
Fondant to cover the cake and to make details
Floral wire and wire cutters
Needle-nosed pliers
Modeling chocolate or gumpaste/fondant for face mask
16” round cake board
Dowels and board for stacking one tier
Serrated knife to carve the cake
Fondant smoother
Non-stick mat to roll modeling chocolate on
Waxed paper
Round pizza cutter or small knife to trim and cut out pieces of fondant
Food coloring
Silver luster dust or grey food color and a round piping tip



Shape the cake.

This is a pretty easy cake to shape since it’s a basic block carving.

stacked cake layers

Put the first two layers on the 16” board, about 2” from the edge of the board.


9" cake layer

Do NOT center the cake on the board! Leave some room on one side because you’ll be adding a face mask to the front and you’ll need space on the board for that later.

Stack one 8” round on the bottom, then add filling and center the 9” round on top of the 8” round layer.


iced and doweled cake layer

board on cake layer

Ice the top of the 9” layer and insert dowels. Place a board on top, with a little space around the edge. The section of the board that faces the center of the 16” base board should be flatter than the back part of the board.


stacked cake layers

Stack the other 8” layer on top of the dowelled tier, add filling then put the 7” layer on top of that, centering it over the other tiers. Don’t worry about whether it’s level or not because you’ll be carving it next.


carved cake

carved cake

Start carving the helmet shape by cutting the top edge of the tier, rounding the cakes. Do it bit by bit, using a photo of a real helmet as a guide. The overall shape should be slightly oval, with the back edge and the sides tapering in toward the bottom a little bit. Start slowly and only take a little off at a time. Don’t worry if there are gaps between the layers at this point.

Carve a little from the top at first, then work your way around and down the cake.

The back should be tapered in more than the front.


filling in cracks with extra cake

Once you have the basic shape, Fill in any large gaps between the layers with icing and small pieces of the trimmed cake.


Wedding

Carve the front of the cake.

The next step is to carve out the part that will be the front of the helmet where the face mask will be attached.

cutout section in the front of the cake

To do this, you need to cut a wedge out of the section that’s facing the center of the cake board. Again, cut a little at a time and do it bit by bit. You don’t want to carve out so much that the upper part won’t be supported by the dowels.


wedge drawing

Make a horizontal cut about 1/2” deep and 4” long into the center of the cake, where the layers meet. Make two vertical cuts about 1 1/2” from either side of the helmet shape, joining the horizontal cut at the top edges, and tapering them in toward the middle of the bottom slightly. Then cut out a wedge so that the bottom edge is about 1” deep where it’s hollowed out, and about 3” wide at the bottom edge.


cutout section in the front of the cake

cutout section in the front of the cake

The side sections will be the part that covers the ears on the helmet. They shouldn’t be too thin or they might not be able to support the fondant.


crumb coated cake

Ice the cake at this point. If it looks uneven once you ice it, go ahead and carve some more off, then re-ice it. Make the icing pretty smooth because you’ll be covering it with fondant next. Chill the cake for a while.

NOTE: This can be done using buttercream only, but the fondant is easier to use to attach the face mask part. If using only buttercream, ice the cake in the team color that you want, and smooth it out well.


Covering the Cake with Fondant.

You can either use white fondant and paint it, or a colored fondant if you want to skip that step. I used white because the final color I needed was dark and it’s hard to match the color in fondant.


fondant cake

Cover the cake with the fondant. Shape the sections that are carved out to be the ear sections, and pinch the fondant to emphasize the shape. Don’t make it too exaggerated, just a little more than the carved section is to begin with.


painted cake

If you need to paint the fondant with food coloring, do so now. Roll out pieces of colored fondant, gumpaste or modeling chocolate to make the stripes on the helmet.

Cut a piece of black fondant and apply it to the back of the section that you cut out of the front.

Lightly spray the helmet with nonstick cooking spray to give it a shiny appearance if you’d like to. Gently rub the spray all over the cake to distribute it evenly.

If the helmet is covered in buttercream, decorate it the same way with the stripes and the black fondant inside. Attach the pieces with some extra butterceam.



Making And Attaching The Face Guard.

For this part I usually use modeling chocolate because it’s easy to wrap around the wire and smooth out.

I’ve seen people make the guard ahead of time with gumpaste and let it dry, but to do that you need to know exactly how big the finished cake will be. I prefer to make the guard after the cake has been shaped so that you can attach it directly to the cake.


rolling the coil

First, roll out a coil of candy clay (or fondant/gumpaste) that’s about 12” long. Use a fondant smoother to roll the coil out evenly, and a nonstick mat or piece of parchment so that it doesn’t stick to the counter.

Click here for a recipe for candy clay.


add the coil to the cake

add the coil to the cake

Pipe some melted chocolate along the front of the helmet, and attach the coil. I press it against the helmet to make sure that it’s really adhered.


add another piece to the front of the cake

cake with face mask shaped out

Roll out another long coil and attach it at the top of the helmet front. It should go down the front along the ear sections, then sit on the board in front of the helmet.


floral wire in the face mask

Next, take two pieces of florist wire that are about 4” long and insert them through the coil and into the board itself. Don’t push them all the way through the board, just far enough in to anchor them.

(I put a piece of paper behind them in the photo so that you can see them better.)


candy clay on the spikes

Cover the wires with more coils of the chocolate. (You can also bend small hooks in the wires before you cover them, or wait and do it in the next steps as described below.)


measuring the second face mask wire

This is the start of the “hard” part. Take a piece of the wire and bend it so that it reaches from the coil that’s attached to the helmet on the side and around the front so that it touches the two wires in the front. When you have the size about right, cut the wire to length and cover it with another coil of chocolate or fondant.


covering the wire

I cover it with the modeling chocolate because you can mold it around the wire. Some people prefer to thread the coil onto the wire, but I find that difficult to do evenly. The only problem with the chocolate is that you’ll have to go back and smooth it out later, but I still find this
the best way to do it.


Making And Attaching The Face Guard.

add the wire to the cake

When the wire is covered, insert the ends of the wire into the section of the coil that’s attached to the cake about halfway between the bottom and the top of the bend.


add the wire to the cake

Cover the wire with the chocolate and smooth it out with your finger to adhere it well.


add the wire to the front of the cake

Try to smooth the chocolate out around the wire, but if it gets too soft just stop for a while until it hardens enough to work with.


connect the wires

When you get to the front of the mask where the wires are, cut a piece of the chocolate away from the wires and bend the edges of the vertical wires over the horizontal wire to attach them together.


smooth the joints

Press the chocolate back into place.

When you’re smoothing the chocolate out, you can use a piece of waxed paper or parchment to wrap around and pull it into a tube shape rather than using your fingers. That can help to keep the coil a little rounder.


third wire for the face mask

Do the same thing with another wire, but attach this one at the base of the coil on the helmet. This one is just pressed up against the vertical wires at the front of the helmet. You can adhere it to the other wires using some melted chocolate if you want to secure them better.


smoothing the connections with a ball tool

When all of the bars are attached on the mask, use some gumpaste tools, or the rounded end of a paintbrush, to smooth out the bumpy sections on the chocolate.

Again, if the chocolate gets too soft, refrigerate the cake or just stop for a while until it hardens up a little.


finished face mask

Here’s the front view of the finished cake before the final pieces are put on.


Trademarks and logos.

A word about trademarks: Sport team logos are trademarked, so you need to get permission from the team to use them on cakes that you sell.

I had a legal agreement with the team whose helmet I’m making in this series that allowed me to use their team logo, but one of the things that most teams require is that you don’t use the picture of the final cake in any advertising or on your website. Because of that, I haven’t included any team logos in this tutorial.

If you’re using any team logos you probably need to get permission even if you’re not selling the cakes! It can be tricky to get permission, but if you want to sell this kind of thing you definitely need to contact the legal department of whichever team you want to use.

If you’re doing these cakes for your own party and not selling them, I wouldn’t post any team logo photos on your social media, no matter how tempted you might be. If you get sued it won’t be worth it.

Some of the teams I contacted over the years were very easy to work with, and some of them were real jerks and not easy at all. Don’t take a chance on being sued for infringement, because some of them will do that!

This goes for professional teams and college teams, too. Some of the colleges I worked with were more difficult to deal with than the pro teams.


Add the details.

add white patch at the top

Add a piece of white at the very top front of the helmet above the chocolate coil.


front of the cake

Put two strips of fondant around the coil and up onto the piece that you just attached to the helmet.


side view of the football helmet cake with details added

Apply a piece of fondant behind the coil on the helmet.


side view of the football helmet cake with details added

Add another strip to the piece that you just put on, wrapped around the coil and attached to the helmet inside the guard.


fondant straps cut out

Roll out two lengths of fondant about 1/2” wide and 8” long. Cut two pieces that look like the ends of a belt and poke holes in them.


fondant straps cut out

Put the pointed section on opposite ends of the longer strips, and then cover them with thin strips of fondant to make the loops that the buckle goes through.


side view of the football helmet cake with straps added

Attach the two straps to the bases of the helmet and thread the ends through to the inside of the face guard.


fondant mouth guard

Cut an oval and cut off the ends so that they’re flat. Press vertical lines in it along the entire length, and put it inside the face guard.


front of the football helmet cake

The ends of the oval should be attached to the ends of the straps, so press them together.

If you want this to be more 3-D, you can make the oval out of gumpaste ahead of time and just estimate how big it needs to be.


front of the football helmet cake with details being added

Using a large round icing tip, press holes into the places on the helmet where the straps and other plastic parts are attached to the helmet.


Paint the imprinted rounds and the “metal” parts on the straps with silver luster dust.

To finish the cake, make the team logos out of fondant or gumpaste and attach them to the helmet on either side. Cover the board with fondant or other decorations.

To finish this cake, I made a team jersey out of fondant and wrapped it around the base of the helmet. Again, because of the trademarks, I can’t use a photo of the finished cake.

Have fun making the 3-D helmet! It’s a fun cake for a groom’s cake, or for a man’s birthday or other special occasion.


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