Hello there!
My son turns 2 on July 16th. We are throwing a big party done in the Disney Cars theme. He LOVES the movie!

Here are my ideas for the cake(s):

1. I have the 3D car pan. What can I do to make this look like Lightening McQueen, the red car?? Mainly, what should I make the thing that sticks up off the back end? (Please forgive me, but I know NOTHING about cars, so I don't even know what to call it, but it sticks up in the back and makes it really look like a race car???) Should I use fondant or BC for this car?

2. My brother custom made a 3D 18-wheeler cake pan out of stainless steel. My husband sells 18-wheelers, but I was thinking that it would be perfect to make "Mack" from the movie. Again, what should I make the bill of his hat out of? Can I use fondant or would that be too heavy? I have never used gumpaste, but maybe that'd be better???

Here's a website where you can get a closer look at the cars. Please click on the white arrows to the left or right to view all the cars in the showroom. If you want a better look, then click on the car itself and then click on "gallery."
http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/cars/main.html?sec=1&car=1

Also, I would LOVE to make a 3D "Mater" cake. Any ideas on this one???

Thanks guys for reading this long post.

I just know that we are having 40 people over and they are always anticipating my cakes. I always want to do something that they haven't seen before, but more importantly, it's my son's birthday and I want it perfect.

I soooo appreciate you guys!

Thanks,
Brandi

Hey there,

I'm not sure if you've looked at the galleries here, but there a few CARS cakes...

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=coppermine&file=displayimage&meta=search&search=lightening&cat=0&pos=4&search=lightening

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=coppermine&file=thumbnails&meta=search&type=full&search=lightning

that may be of help you to.

Also, do you want to make three different cakes? or one? I was a little confused since you mentioned three different "cars" that you were interested in making. I think it woud be fine to make both a fondant spoiler (that's what the things on the back are called) and bill of cap. For spoiler though, you'll have to make the attachment parts as well, and that may be a little difficult to look right. Anyway, hopefully someone else will be able to help as well.

~Ami

Thanks for the response.
I did see the cakes in the gallery. They are really good. I noticed that they were done with the NASCAR pan, and I onlyhave the 3D Cruiser pan. Hope that'll work.

Sorry for the confusion, but I am needing 2 cakes total. Ideally I would love to have Lightning McQueen and Mater. But I was thinking that since I don't know how to do Mater and I already have an 18-wheeler pan then it would just be easier to make Mack the semi-truck.

It's a spoiler!......Duh! I knew that. I guess I was just thinking that since it was a race car then it would have some fancy technical name. Thanks!!

Any other ideas or suggestions??

No ideas right now but ...I am doing the same thing this weekend for my son's 4 th birthday. I will let you know how it goes and if there is anything to watch out for.
In the mean time I will be watching this thread closely I need all the help I can get

ok...reference the following against the Pixar/Cars web site image of Mater...helps if you do the "ROTATE" function so you can see him from all sides (and BTW -- that site is stunning! they've done such an impressive job w/ the gallery!!)

now to the sketch.

note you can build him in two or three pieces depending upon if you want the gap between the bed and cab to be real (3 pieces) or just drawn on (2 pieces

the dashed lines are layers...2 or 3 for each part depending upon how big you want Mater to be.

if 3 sections : bed, bottom of Mater, top of cab....if 2 sections, bed and bottom one continuous piece and then top of cab.

carve to get simple shape, then detail out w/ icing or fondant. for example, the little bump above Mater's eyes and bump at bottom of cab wouldn't be carved but built up w/ icing or fondant, ditto for the curved headlight areas.

as for the rigging in back...make out of fondant covered dowels or pieces of chocolate cut to shape and glued together w/ chocolate. wire can be black licorice laces.

orange light could be an orange gumdrop.

if you felt confident doing it, I'd ice all in white and then paint/sponge/airbrush the colors on to get the motteled/rusted/faded look.

wheels could be small (snack size) chocolate covered donuts or oreo cookies painted or made out of fondant.

HTH

(edited: and someday i'll learn to type and spell!)

Wow Doug. Thanks!

Wow, Doug, I so admire you. You seem to be a real cake guru.

I made my precious son a Lightning cake with the Lightning pan, he found it on one of our frequent trips to Michaels.......... he loved it, but I felt like I could have done better......... and I'm sure I'll never use that pan again..........

ok...tried an experiment this a.m. and it worked

went to disney/pixar site.

used print screen function to copy side view of mater (alt+print screen)

pasted it into MS Publisher (or any photo editing software should do)

cropped it out all the excess.

resized until Mater filled the page L->R (he's much longer than tall)

printed it out.

bingo..perfect profile to work from

could take this to local copy center and blow up...way big ..say to 11x17 paper and then have template could cut out and use to carve cake.

can repeat process to get templates for all sides of Mater (or any of the cars.)

HTH!

so, so looking forward to see the results. i can identify w/ Mater!

Thanks again Doug!

I will give it a shot. I just wonder if I could get him painted correctly. I do like the sponge idea. Let me put some more thought to this before I go for it.

I think there is a little Mater in all of us or at least someone we know!

I hope you post pictures! I am going to be doing Cars theme cakes soon and I only have the pan from Michaels. A Mater one would be great though. I can't wait to see how yours turns out.