How to make a Sphere Cake

Ever seem a 3D round cake and wonder how to make it? Well, the easiest way is to bake a half sphere cake is in a bowl. A regular stainless steel prep bowl or a 8” stainless steel hemisphere pan works. The thickness of the metal helps buffer the heat so that the cake does not get over-baked on the outside.

Steps on how to bake a sphere cake:

1. Bake the cake upside down in a bowl. No pan liner is needed; just be sure to grease & flour the bowl before pouring in the batter. Use a heating core for this shape to prevent the outsides of the cake from browning too much.

2. Once the cake is baked, cooled, and sliced into layers, line the same bowl with plastic wrap and begin assembling the cake in the bowl using my cake filling method, which involves alternating layers of cake with layers of filling right inside the bowl.

3. Once the cake is filled to the top of the bowl, cover it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer for 30 minutes or until the cake is cold enough to release from the pan.

4. De-panning the cake should be relatively easy since the bowl is lined with plastic wrap. With a blow-dryer, if you heat the outside of the pan just a little and tug on the plastic, the cake ought to release itself.

5. Using a small offset spatula, crumb coat the cake with buttercream. Transfer the cake onto a working platform of some sort (a flat platter, a larger cardboard circle, an old cake board, or in this case, a pizza pan) to support cake while it’s being moved in and out of the fridge to be frosted. Chill the cake in the refrigerator until the buttercream is cold and no longer sticky.

6.  Add a second coat of buttercream in the same manner and chill the cake again until the buttercream is cold and hard (15 minutes or more).

7. While spinning the cake on a turntable, scrape the rough edges off the cake with the flat end of a plastic bowl scraper. This only works if the cake is well-chilled so that the buttercream is firm.

8. Buff spatula marks away by rubbing the surface of the cake with a piece of clean paper towel while spinning the turntable.

9. Chill the cake again before running an offset spatula around the bottom to release it from its working platform. Then, transfer the cake to a serving platter before decorating it.

To make a full sphere cake, bake two half spheres. Level off one of the half spheres and fit it with a piece of cardboard to serve as the cake’s bottom. Frost both halves upside down then fit them together and smooth over the seam.