Soccer Birthday Cake

As a result of the Soccer World Cup, a friend asked me to make a soccer cake for her son's 2nd birthday, so I tried to make it kinda cutsy since it was for a little tyke. I used the Wilton soccer ball pan that I had recently won in a raffle, and then put the 'ball' on a double 12" round cake. This was large enough to feed 40 people.

I used my cricut E to cut the letters and the little soccer dudes. The uniform is yellow and blue, the colours for Brazil! For some reason, I struggled to cut the letters with the E. The little dolls cut out perfectly and since I was using the same fondant/sugarpaste mixture for the letters and the dolls, I don't quite know why it kept scrunching up the letters instead of cutting them. Eventually I followed the advice of a lady that I found on the cricut message board and froze the sugarpaste for a few minutes before cutting. This helped tremendously. The buttercream icing was all made and coloured at home except for the black which is from Country Kitchen.