The Cake

Last weekend was S's second birthday. That's right my baby is now two, let me take a deep breath and compose myself for a minute.....okay, I'm better now.

S, as you my or may not know, is obsessed with all things Lightning McQueen. I decided to play into this obsession and make him a 3D Lighting McQueen cake. For some reason I have some sick, masochistic desire to make my children elaborate birthday cakes. Example:I made this cake for J's 5th birthday.

Since it was not my first time to the carnival I decided I needed to up my game and use fondant. Mind you, I have never used fondant before, never seen anyone use it, or taken any classes that have anything to do with cake decorating or decorating with fondant. I decided to completely ignore my lack of knowledge and push through. To try to plan my attack I turn to the font of all knowledge, the Internet. I was able to find a few examples of McQueen cakes and a recipe for homemade fondant. Score!

With this new found information I started the process. I made the fondant. Homemade fondant is super easy, just one package of mini marshmallows, one pound of powdered sugar and about four table spoons of water. Easy and a heck of a lot cheaper then store bought fondant. Now, to the cake structure.

First, two loaf pans of cake.


The next step was to slice the cakes in half lengthwise to make layers, fill the layers with raspberry jam, my filling of choice, and put the loaves back together. I then cut off one third of the length of the first loaf. I secured the whole loaf to my cake board with a little frosting and added the 1/3 chunk to the end to increase the length. I then took a little frosting and "glued" the 2/3 chunk on top of the extended loaves. This was the rough form of the car, from here I started to shape. This is what I ended up with.
I did all the shaping free hand with a serrated knife and used a chunk I cut off for the spoiler.

After I was satisfied with the shape, between you and me I was never really satisfied with it but I had to force myself to stop cutting, I frosted the entire cake with a thin crumb coat. In hindsight the crumb coat could have been thicker, live and learn.

Next the fondant. I took a large ball of the fondant I had made and dyed it red. My recipe for red is an entire jar of red gel food coloring and a few drops of yellow. The yellow will help it from getting to pink, but if you put too much in it will turn orange. Dyeing fondant consists of kneading the color in to the sugar dough, basically glop the food coloring on and go to town. Be sure to wear gloves and protect you counter top with something. It will definitely dye anything it touches at this stage.

After the fondant is the desired color roll is out to about 1/4 of an inch, using powdered sugar to keep it from sticking. Using your rolling pin, pick up the rolled fondant and drape it over your cake. Gently press it into the shape of the cake until the entire thing is covered. This is an area where my technique could use some work. There were some areas where the fondant pulled and didn't look smooth. To finish, use a knife to cut the excess of the edge.

Now the decorating. This is my favorite part, but also the most time consuming. For Lightning I measured the cake and made templates for all the windows and lighting bolt. I followed the same process as above to roll out the fondant and then, using the templates, cut out the shapes.

I glued the shapes into place using royal icing. (water and powder sugar)


I painted the lighting bolt using food color markers. These are very helpful things to have around. Unfortunately the only place I could find them in my metropolis was Wal-mart and I hate Wal-mart, ugh.


For the tires and circle on his hood, I dyed fondant black on cut out circles. Specifically for the tires I made rice crispy treats, formed them into tires and then covered those in black fondant.


I did the detail work using black frosting and yellow glitter frosting that I bought.


I have to say I was pretty pleased with the results, but the best moment was when S saw it and said "Night-ning!" He definitely knows his way to my heart. Happy birthday my sweet baby boy!