I will be baking/carving a VW Beetle Cake for my DH's birthday on Thursday. I'm using the Durable Chocolate Cake recipe from the recipes section and will be baking tomorrow, putting in the freezer and then finishing it up on his birthday. I found an AllRecipes recipe for fondant...http://allrecipes.com/recipe/marshmallow-fondant/ which I have never made so hopefully that will work. I also might make that tomorrow just in case it doesn't turn out...I can make a run to Michaels! The cake won't be too big, probably no bigger than a 1/4 sheet cake. I've considered even just baking a sheet cake, decorating a road and then making a smaller car out of fondant to put on.

So my question is, what are the basic necessities I will need for carving/decorating/texturizing(made that word up) the cake. I've looked at pictures and the cakes clearly have indents to separate the doors from the rest of the vehicle. Anyways, I've never done any carving and everytime I go to Michael's cake section I look lost because I really have no idea what I need to complete this (special cake knives, cake lifter, etc...). Any help would be great!!!

ADoes your michaels have the Wilton car pan? It's perfect for the bug.

Since you are such a beginner and such a short time frame, I would suggest keeping it really simple.  Skip the carving until you have more time to play with it.  Make the quarter sheet, cover it with the fondant to give that a try.  Make your road, etc and buy a toy car to use on the cake.  Then you will have given fondant a try and can use some of the leftovers to start playing with figure making for the next time. 

Oh, I don't work with fondant so can't give you any specific techniques, just wanted to try to give you a suggestion.

i recently did a term on carved cakes. basic things you will need are a long carving knife, your turntable, work board and presentation board, ganache, offset spatula, modelling tools, exactlo knife... to name a few. 

print a picture of the car you want to do, cut out a template the exact size you want the cake to be. this will be your guide when carving. 

most importantly- cut only small pieces at a time until you get the desired shape. 

good luck!

I may be making a VW cake also, but I had time to get a Wilton 3D cruiser pan on ebay. I haven't made it yet but I also had the idea of googling cartoon images of VW's and making a template to cut a flat car image out of. I don't know if you have ever done this but it is easier than carving a cake for sure I think. Print your VW image and cut it out. I lay it on my fondant and with and small knife start cutting until I get it right. It can take a while and a lot of concentrating for me. I think this may be easier than carving the cake though.

AI did a VW cake a few years ago, and have never carved a cake either. I used the Wilton 3D pan, and did a little "carving" by adding more cake to the top to get a good roundness to the top, plus I added about an extra inch or so of sheet cake underneath it to give me a little more room for tires. My big learning lesson was in the tires, I should have made them from RKT instead of cake, and should have made them ahead of time. As it was, my car looked like it had flat tires. Next similar cake was a tractor in which I used RKT for the tires, and made them the day before, and had much better luck. Good luck!

AI apologize for the very delayed response and thank you! I appreciated everyone's advice. I've attached a picture of how it turned out....the top is what it was supposed to have looked like. So I bought the Wilton pan and of course I didn't bake it long enough and flipped it upside down and some of the middle came out. So I flipped it back over and stuffed what fell out back in and let it cool. Then I put it on a cake carrier bottom and added some extra baked cake to the roof to round it out, the hatch to smooth it out and the hood to raise it. Then I put a layer of thin icing to smooth it out and put it in the fridge. I took it out later and instead of using fondant, I piped little stars on using the cake pan's guide. Then I cut the tires out and put oreo cookies in and put icing on those as well.

My husband loved it but I'm not so sure lol (This specific VW is from a book series he reads) He at least recognized it :D

[IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/2984401/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

YOU DID A GREAT JOB !