For our Super Bowl party, I made another stadium cake. I've done a vanilla one twice, but this time I decided to switch it up by making a chocolate stadium cake. I wanted a chocolate pound cake recipe, but ultimately decided to make the Star Spangled Cocoa Bundt Cake recipe from Hershey's, even though it's not a pound cake. [I think it's called "star spangled" because it's filled with strawberries and blueberries, but I wasn't going to do any of that.] I made the cake the morning I wanted to serve it, since it would be sitting around unfrosted.
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The cake recipe was easy to make. I used real butter, substituted yogurt for sour cream, and used sour milk in place of buttermilk. I sprayed the pan with cooking spray with flour, but also sprinkled some cocoa on top of that so that the outside edges would be chocolatey. I only put some of the batter in the stadium cake pan (affiliate link), since you're supposed to fill it no more than ¾ full. I eyeballed it, so I definitely got it more full than I should have; some of the batter spilled over the pan into the oven. I baked it 35 minutes, and baked the rest of the batter in mini-Bundt cake molds. After cooling the cake for 10 minutes, I flipped it onto a wire rack and cooled it another hour before I decorated it.
Since this year's game was Packers vs. Steelers, my main colors were green, yellow, and brown, which was as close to black as I could get. Mini chocolate chips and mini M&Ms were just the right size to sit in the stands; I used lines of cookie icing to keep them in place. I also used some on the sidelines.
Last year I put tinted coconut in the center as turf; I wanted to do this again, but it was kind of messy. This year, I mixed together melted chocolate and shredded coconut and pressed them into the bottom of the hole for the field. I tinted more coconut by shaking it in a bag with a tiny amount of water and a few drops of green food coloring; I pressed this green coconut on top of the chocolate coconut layer to make it stick. I put a regular-sized brown M&M in the center of the field as a football, and used regular-sized green M&Ms for the Green Bay Packers' offense and yellow M&Ms for the Steelers' defense (which I arranged as best as I could on such a small field).
The chocolate cake recipe that I made was excellent. The cake was fluffy and had a rich chocolate flavor. It was exactly what I wanted. I was also more satisfied with my decorating than I was last time. The chocolate-coconut field worked relatively well. It was firm but chewy, like a candy bar, although not all of the turf stuck to the chocolate as well as I would have liked. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how this cake turned out!
📖 Recipe
- ¾ cup butter softened
- 1 ⅔ cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ cup sour cream
- 2 cups flour
- ⅔ cup cocoa
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup buttermilk/sour milk (or, 1 tablespoon white vinegar + enough milk to equal a cup)
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Beat together butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until fluffy with an electric mixer. Add sour cream and beat to combine. Add half of the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder, mixing briefly to combine. Add buttermilk, mixing again, then add the rest of the remaining dry ingredients. Beat for 2 minutes on medium speed.
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Pour batter into a well-greased stadium cake pan or other 12-cup tube/Bundt pan. Bake 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove cake from pan to a wire rack. Cool completely before decorating or serving.
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