Sunday, June 29, 2008

Race Car Cake!

We had so much fun with Maddux's Race Car Cake, that I thought I would share the directions with you! I found a lot of recipes and ideas online, so I just sort of combined everything I found to make my own! **Oh, and yes, I do realize that the "3" is backwards. We had a candle malfunction of some sort. :)


Let's get started with 4 chocolate (or any flavor you like) 8 or 9-inch round cakes. I just used the boxed cakes since I piled on the buttercream icing later. You will need to cut a small semi-circle out of one stack of cakes so that they fit together snugly. No worries if you don't make a perfect cut, icing fixes everything. I am thinking of having a bumper sticker made that says so.


I suppose that you can buy the icing in the containers, but it is so easy to make your very own buttercream icing! And wouldn't your mother-in-law be impressed? Well, my MIL wasn't, but maybe yours will be. You will need: one bag of confectioners' sugar (about 7 1/2 cups), 1 cup of shortening, 1 cup of butter, 2 tsp. of vanilla and 2-6 T milk depending on the moisture in your house and the consistency that you want. Since no one would see any of the white icing, I used butter flavored shortening instead of plain old shortening and real vanilla instead of the Wilton Clear Vanilla. This recipe makes about 6 cups of frosting, and you could very easily cut it in half for a smaller cake.


You will start off my creaming together the softened butter and the shortening. See? Easy.


Add in the vanilla and the confectioners' sugar. Go slow with the sugar so you don't cover your kitchen in a fine mist of white. I don't ever follow my own directions and will be cleaning up the stuff until next Tuesday. Once all of the confectioners' sugar is incorporated, it will be stiff. Add the milk in 1 Tablespoon at a time. Slowly. You don't want to add in too much. Once the frosting is smooth and has a spreadable consistency, you are done.

Voila. Homemade buttercream icing. Commence sugar coma.

Frost your cakes with a thin layer of the buttercream. Don't worry about perfection here because you are not going to be able to see this anyway.
Now you will need 1-2 cups of chocolate cookie crumbs. In most normal stores you would be able to buy these as crumbs, but since I live in the middle of nowhere, I am going to have to do this the old fashioned way. Using my handy dandy rolling pin I will squish the poor unsuspecting Teddy Grahams into crumbs. So very sad.

Once you have the 1-2 cups of crumbs (which I used closer to 1 cup), you will need two round bowls (or whatever you can find, obviously). Center these in the middle of the cakes, and ignore the fact that this cake suddenly looks more appropriate for a Bachelor party.
Carefully spread the cookie crumbs around the bowls.

When you remove the bowls, it looks like this.

Now, fill in those circles with green sprinkles. Fun times.
Now, you can apply sprinkles to the sides of the cake, but I couldn't figure out how to do that without making a monumental mess, so I just used a star tip and piped tinted buttercream icing all around the cake. It takes a lot of time, but Maddux will tell you that it was worth it. This is a great time to catch up on episodes of MTV's America's Best Dance Crew. Not that I would watch it, but, um, you could, if you wanted to.

Once the piping is done, you can add the white Good & Plenty's for the lines in the race track. I am sure that you could also use tic tacs or something else, but I love Good & Plenty's.

For the checkered flags, I just used a marker and some cardstock, but I have heard rumors of clip art being on the Internet, which would save you some time. I just happen to be very fond of markers. Attach the flags to some toothpicks and you are almost done!
Add some race cars and you are finished! See? That wasn't so bad!

Brad was upset that the number of candles did not coordinate with the number of years of Maddux's life, but Maddux is obsessed with blowing out candles, so we went big. Try not to set the checkered flags on fire, not that anyone would, um, but just in case.

22 comments:

Susan said...

This cake is unbelievable!! I LOVE the step by step instructions and can't wait to make this for my little boy. He will be ten but with him being autistic he is fixated on cars of all types and this cake will be perfect. I just love your blog.

Lal said...

This cake is AWESOME!! You outdid yourself....BIG TIME!! Me thinks I'm going to have to steal your cake idea for Mikey's birthday :)

Unknown said...

I love this. Might have to give it a go.

Juliana Michaels 17turtles said...

This cake is just awesome!!!

Carmen O. said...

WHAT AN AWESOME CAKE! I can see by the pic below he loved it! I did a caterpillar cake and ran across the pic the other day. Gotta scrap it.

Anonymous said...

I'm still waiting for my princess cake... :-)

Oh, and guess what I did yesterday... think Berlin and acts of craziness... how's that for a hint? ;-)

shopgirlaudi said...

That is an AWESOME cake!!! You did a FAB job, Estee. You totally ROCKED this!!!

Monica Jo said...

Estee, that cake is too stinkin cute. You did an amazing job. And I am impressed with the buttercream icing even if your mom in law wasnt. heehee We should compare stories **Snicker snicker**

Anonymous said...

so i have a guy friend who's birthday is coming up ... he is turning twenty three. so i am thinking if we make this cake for him but cut out the last like seven steps it will be the perfect cake for him. just use flesh colored frosting instead of green. you can call your business 'estee's erotic cakes'. perfection.

Anonymous said...

Hi, thank you for your inspiration with the race car cake! I used your icing recipe, and it was yummy! I used many of your ideas - but made it a big "4" instead of an "8" since my son was turning 4! Thank you for sharing!!!
Pam (Seattle)

Patrizzia said...

Wow Etsee.. you have beyond impressed me. You were able to make this with 3 kids around? It is fantastic.

becky* said...

I just found your directions online and made this cake for my little boy - you are so hilarious, thanks a million for the help!

Abby said...

I also found your instructions when I searched race car cakes. I just made this for my son and he said "It is exactly what I always wanted my whole life!" Thanks for the great ideas.

Packer Family said...

My sister made this cake and I posted about it littlehandsbigwork.blogspot.com Thanks for the tutorial!

Anonymous said...

I just found this and I'm sold. My son turns 2 on Monday. My twin nephews turn 12 three days later. The family celebration is Sunday--guess what I am gearing (get it?) up to make. Vrooooom!
Thanks for the inspiration

Mary said...

I have to make a cake for my son's cub scout Blue and Gold night the them is anything on wheels. This is perfect...But I am going to let him make the race cars out of Twinkies with Oreo wheels. Thanks for the ideas,

Little Lovables said...

wonderful idea! I am going to have to try something like this for my son's racecar themed part tomorrow

shivani said...

hey thanks for the idea i hink it will work out for my sons third birthday party this halloween ...hes a big race car fan...and only wants a racing car cake ...

Shikha said...

Wow !! Amazing.. I have seen so many cakes and instructions.. yours just tops it all.. thank you so much for sharing :) Love your cake design and blog..

JulieAnn said...

Thanks for sharing! It was big hit at my daughter's birthday party.

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for the step buy step instructions with all the pics. It was totally awesome! My grandson turns 8 and so the shape matches his age. He picked out this cake and is excited for his cake for the birthday party. :-)

Lynn said...

thanks for this post. I made this cake for my son's 10th bday party yesterday. I posted about it and added your link.. http://ladybug-chronicles.blogspot.com/2011/12/race-car-checkered-cake.html