Lightning McQueen Cake

I made a Lightning McQueen cake for my son's 2nd birthday this year. I started off with 2 boxes of cake mix, which made one 9x11 sheet cake, one 8x8 square cake and 4 cupcakes.

After the cakes were cooled, I took the 9x11 sheet cake out of the baking dish and placed it upside down on my decorating sheet. I then placed the 8x8 sheet cake (upside down) on top of the 9x11 using chocolate frosting to stick the two cakes together. Next, I used a picture off of the internet and a toy car we already had to carve away at the cakes to create my cake-mold. For the wheels, I cut off the bottoms of the cupcakes, and carved out round areas where I thought the wheels should go. Using chocolate frosting I glued on the fenders, foil and wheels.

Next, I wrapped the cake in plastic wrap and froze it over-night so it would be easier to frost.

What I should have done after freezing the cake was to just frost the whole thing in red and then do the decorative frosting, but I didn't because I was lazy. This created some difficulty with trying to get the decorative frosting to stick. So, next time, I will take the extra time to frost the whole cake with a flat layer of frosting first. I did, however, frost the very front of the car and the windshield with a first-layer of frosting, which made that part of the cake easier to decorate.

Here is the final result. As always, I warmed up the frosting in the microwave in a separate bowl before adding the coloring. I find that this makes it easier to squeeze the frosting out of the tube.

For the eyes, I just bought some fun candy eyes at our local grocery store. They are a bit small for the cake, but they worked.