Fortuna League Promotion Cake

August 24, 2018

Disclaimer: This cake is not affiliated with the soccer team Fortuna Düsseldorf. It is published with permission of Fortuna Erstklassig, the designer of the t-shirt that served as inspiration.

Fortuna Düsseldorf is my husband's favorite soccer team. He's been a fan since he was a child and is a true, die hard fan. Last year they played so well that they moved up from the German second league to the first league (Bundesliga). To celebrate, I decided we needed to make a Fortuna cake.

Since this wasn't for a particular event, but rather for us, it was an opportunity to try out a new recipe. I tried a recipe for strawberry cake. I also flavored the buttercream with strawberry jam to make strawberry buttercream.

I filled and frosted the cake with the strawberry buttercream and covered it in red fondant.

Then I smoothed the fondant and cut off the excess.

I noticed, however, that my fondant had a couple of little holes.

I needed to repair the holes, so I made a paste out of fondant and water.

I used the paste to repair the holes as best I could.

Then I cut out the letters I needed using my fondant press form. The design of the top comes from a t-shirt now available. It says "Fortuna Erstklassig" which means Fortuna first class. Fortuna Erstklassig is a company from Düsseldorf and want to support the city. For your own t-shirt, click the link: https://www.instagram.com/fortunaerstklassig/

Then I placed the letters in a circular formation around the top of the cake.

I had prepared three different sized circles and sketched the profile of the Düsseldorf TV tower on them. That way I could see which size fit the best onto my cake. Turns out the largest one was the best fit.

I cut out one side of the sketch out of paper, placed it on top of my fondant, and cut out two of them from my white fondant.

Then I placed them on the center of the cake, leaving a gap between the white pieces, forming the outline of the TV tower.

Then, using a circle cutter, I cut out 6 Fortuna 95 logos. The number 95, I made with a fondant press form.

I placed them around the cake as evenly spaced as possible.

However, the day was very warm. The side of my cake was sweating and the white fondant had trouble sticking. They tended to fall down the cake. It was literally melting.

So, to firm it up a bit, I put the cake in the fridge to stop the melting. In the meantime, I used my clay extruder to make several long cords of white fondant.