I've just made a rugby ball cake for saturday, its my first rugby ball but previously I've done a couple of footballs. With the footballs I didnt use any support and by the time it was picked up it had a very flat bottom as the weight had sagged down a bit. This time for the rugby ball I put dowels and a board in the middle of the cake, so that the top half wouldnt squash the bottom half, but the bottom just seems to be saggin of its own accord. Its not even that big, its smaller than life size. Can anyone tell me why its doing this and how I stop it in future? I cant understand it, I've seen LOADS of other rugby ball cakes that all look perfect!

i always have to let the round ball pan cakes settle before i start decorating them. always have some amount of the bottom part get squished by the top...kind of like what you are talking about. i don't really think there is anything you can do to stop the cake part from settling. you can fill the pan with more batter (3/4ths full) and then after leveling them off i always have quite a bit of frosting in between them. HTH

Hi. I have also heard that when making orb or ball cakes, you should use a dense cake mix such as a pound cake. Hope that helps.

I like to use an all-butter buttercream (SMBC) covered in fondant. You can chill it all along the way which will keep it in place and once the fondant sets up you can bring it back to room temp for serving and it shouldn't sag.