Disney Pixar's Cars 2 Cakes!

My most recent cake creation was Disney Pixar's Cars 2 themed! My friend's cousin turned three years old and, like me, loves the movie! I am a huge Disney fan so this project was by far one of my favorites, playing Disney music during the entire decorating process! I made an ice cream cake sporting a smiling Lightning McQueen, as well as sixteen mini car "cakelets," using a special pan made by Nordic Ware for the birthday party. Although it was one of the more challenging orders I have made, it was also one of the most fun!

For the ice cream cake, I lined a 9x13 inch cake pan with plastic wrap and then layered the ice cream and cookie crumbs one layer at a time, freezing each layer before starting another. After it was completely frozen solid, I iced the cake with Cool Whip, by far the best frosting for ice cream cake. Not only does it taste great with the ice cream, Cool Whip adheres to the ice cream very well. I then used fondant and gum paste to create Lightning McQueen, layering each colored shape and using water as "glue" to hold the shapes together.

For the "cakelets," I used a pound cake recipe that was provided with the pan. I have my own white cake recipe that I usually refer to, but because this pan was very intricate and had a lot of small spaces to fill, a cake with more density was needed. To ice the cakes, I used royal icing, made from confectioner sugar, meringue powder, vanilla, and water, to create the solid base. Royal icing is similar to sugar cookie icing, it is a poured frosting that smooths out and hardens onto the cake. This made it easy to pick up each car as I piped the details onto the cakelets. This was probably the most time consuming part of the project. Each car was so different and so detailed that it took about twenty minutes to decorate each car.

Overall this was such a fun project! Keep checking for more Dolly Cakes updates and make sure you "Like" my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/DollyCakesCakeArtistry, and follow me on Twitter, @DollyCakesBufNY. Thank you for reading and commenting!