2011 Season Michigan Wolverines Tailgate Cakes

In honor of Sunday night's announcement that Michigan is going to the Sugar bowl, I thought I would share a few of my favorite cakes that I made over the course of the season for the tailgate that I am a part of.

I already posted the Ohio State cake for the final game of the regular season, but here are the rest of the 2011 home game cakes.

The picture to the left is from the Eastern Michigan game.  The tailgate theme was Far Eastern so I used fondant to cut out the Chinese characters for Michigan to put on the front of the cake. To top it off I made a fondant fortune cookie and used a food write to write "Michigan will beat Eastern" as the fortune.

For the collage below I'll describe the cakes top to bottom, left to right.  For the Nebraska game I decorated the cake around their mascot by making corn stalks out of fondant and writing "Beat the Huskers" across the top of the cake.

The Minnesota tailgate had a Mardi Gras theme so I made a doberge cake and decorated it with a harlequin pattern and a mask.

The first ever homegame at Michigan Stadium played at night was the Notre Dame game and there was a lot of memorabilia being sold with the "Under the Lights" logo emblazoned on it.  I thought the logo looked neat and recreated it out of fondant for the top of the blue velvet cake.

The Purdue game was on Halloween weekend so I made a pumpkin cake shaped like a pumpkin. I used some brown edible glitter to give the cake some dimension, made the stem and leaves out of green fondant and finished it off with a big block M on the front. 

For the Luau themed tailgate for the Western Michigan game I made a pineapple cake with coconut cream cheese icing. I completed the cake with a block M on the top and a border of blue hibiscus flowers made of fondant.

The San Diego State game had a Mexican theme so I cut my cake into a block M shape and wrote "Vamos Azul" across the banner (Go Blue in Spanish).  

Making the tailgate cakes is a lot of fun for me and gives me a nice excuse to bake.  I'm sad that the regular season is over but I am excited about heading down to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl. Go Blue!

Michigan vs. Ohio State Tailgate Cake

Since moving to Ann Arbor I've adopted the Michigan Wolverines as the football team I root for.  Neither my undergraduate or graduate alma mater have a very strong college football program and the way everyone in town backs the team and tailgates made following the team inevitable.

As part of the tailgate that I participate in I make a themed cake each week. Yesterday was not just any game, it was the game, Michigan vs. Ohio State, so for this week's cake I made a chocolate buttermilk cake and iced it with green tinted buttercream icing to make it look like a football field.  I made the field markings, school initials and football on the cake using fondant.  To make the intials stand up I inserted skewers inside them that extended into the cake. 

Watching the game was a lot of fun, albeit quite stressful, especially during the last few minutes when the fate of the game was held in the balance.  In the end Michigan pulled out the win with a 40-34 final score and ended the 7-year winless drought against Ohio State.  Is the next stop a BCS Bowl Game?  I sure hope so!