Preview your Cart
- No products in the cart.
Third Car’s the Charm
7 April 2015
In my whole cake lifetime I have made three actual car cakes including this one below. The first one was for my birthday almost six years ago and the second one was almost a year after for a client. If I am honest, I usually turn down car orders because they are extremely time consuming, challenging, and clients generally don’t want to splurge that much on a car shaped cake. The most annoying thing about car cakes (and cakes that are supposed to be a replica of anything really!)? If you don’t get the proportions right, it ends up looking like a whole other model!
But a couple of weeks ago, I got a request for a car cake. I don’t do orders anymore but the client came highly recommended from a friend… I was also up for a challenge so I thought why not? It could be fun to create something out my comfort zone once in awhile 🙂 I took some photos along the way so you can get an idea of the process and witness how differently I worked on the second car cake compared to this one. I mean I actually had to do maths and ratios for that second cake! This one was much easier because I invested in the blueprints 🙂
Gathering and printing all (side, front, back and top) the templates to actual size can be quite time consuming but so worth it! Using all of this will ensure that you keep your car in proportion. Here is where I purchased the blueprints of this particular car from.
The rough shape before the ganache… yes, it looks messy right now but no one will be able to tell when it’s ganached.
I finally got to use the Sugar Shapers I got from Innovative Sugarworks last year for this project and it was a life saver! It made marking and indenting the curves and corners of the cake much easier. The guys at Innovative Sugarworks have also been kind enough to offer my readers a 5% discount on their products too! Just use the code ‘WEELOVEBAKING’ before you check out 🙂 In case you are wondering, I used the firm tipped ones here.
I used acetate plastic for the windscreen because it was quick and easy but if you are interested in learning how to make the wind screen out of gelatine, you should check out the car class on Craftsy by Mike McCary – it really is a fantastic class filled with so many techniques.
Add elements to represent the the birthday boy’s job and hobbies and Ta-Da!
If you’re looking for a recipe, remember we have a cake recipe calculator on my site with all the recipes from my book! I recommend chocolate mud cake for any carved cakes like this since it’s denser.
10 thoughts on “Third Car’s the Charm”
Great post! Thanks so much for showing the steps and letting us know where to get some helpful tools.
Fab post, I’ve got a car cake coming up so great advice, but can I ask how did you support the car to look lifted of the board?
Hi Yvonne, in this case I used some foam core but you could also use styrofoam.
Hey Sharon! Did you just stack foam car from the middle or was there a support system with nuts and bolds in the foam core?
Hi Rachel, the cake was just on the foam core as shown, it wasn’t big or tall enough to need more structure inside it 🙂
Hi Sharon, was the cake sitting on Styrofoam? Cos I saw the white under the cake in one of the pics above. Also what do you put in between the cake and the cake board? Also foam? Thanks for your help.
Hi Maureen, it was on foam core which is very similar. Not sure what you mean about between the cake and board? the cake board was just covered in coconut, the cake was not touching it because it was resting on the foam.
Fantastic car! Thank you for the photos of stages. I also have Mike’s Craftsy Class which I found extremely useful especially when I was asked to make a large truck cake
Christine x
What size was the cake for this car. It is difficult to find this info on any car tutorials.
From memory I used 2 x 8in square cakes. The size of the cake used and the final project really depends on how many people the cake will need to feed. So usually I start from there and then print or resize my templates to match that cake size. Hope that helps!