Drudgery, Drama, and Dessert: Lightning McQueen

Today we celebrated the birthdays of my friends, Tyler and Trisha's sons. One turned 3 and the other turned 4. This is the perfect opportunity to try my hand at a more creative cake than the typical ones I make for adults.
A few years ago, I interned with a woman who made these kinds of cakes and picked up a lot of great tips, but I will say, doing the whole thing by myself was harder than it looked!
The boys like the movie "Cars" so I decided to make a cake that looked like Lightning McQueen. I found a tutorial on Pinterest and followed the directions to a tee. The first step was making all of the car details. They were made a few days ahead of time so they could harden up. With fondant, sometimes you want it to be soft and mailable but other times it needs to be hard in order to keep it's shape. Here I have the front of the tires, the "Rusteze" logo, the eyes, the windows, the headlights, and the back piece of the car.

Once all the details were done, it was time to make the cake. I made my normal chocolate cake recipe and stacked it three layers high with frosting in between each layer. There was a lot of frosting and the end result was a very moist, frosting-rich cake! I carved the cake into a car shape and then after frosting it, I covered the whole thing with fondant and then added the details.

The hardest part was actually covering the cake in fondant. I ended up rolling it out a bit too thin so Lightning McQueen kind of look like he had been around the track a bit. His finish looked a bit pitted and his tires looked a bit worn. But he looked perfect to the eyes of 3 and 4 year old boys.