Made a cake for some HUGE soccer fans. This cake was life-size; it WAS a soccer ball with the bottom cut off. It was first iced in chocolate, and I like the "coloring book" effect of the icing of how it came out.
Here's the final cake:

Chopping the chocolate that went into the icing:

I made three and a half chocolate cake recipes, translated into five cake layers to use to carve down:

All carved:

Final product was a chocolate cake with chocolate icing, then decorated with vanilla and chocolate, which was dyed black for the ball:

This is the best part though, the final word from the cake receiver: "Your cake was a huge hit – it was wonderful to look at and delectable to eat!! Everyone was quite amazed. Thanks again!!!"