Cam and Asher's Awesome Race Track Birthday Cake

It's official!! We are both mothers of two-year-olds! Where did those 2 years go? And where did my sanity and clean house run off to? But seriously, we couldn't be more proud of our two little boys...and to show our pride (and craftiness) we designed and created the Best.Cake.EVER! It's definitely amateur work, but I think Wilton will be calling any day now to hire us on as decorators or, at minimum, creative consultants.

 So without further ado....Cam and Asher's Awesome Race Track Birthday Cake

Here is how we made it. We started with 4 chocolate buttermilk cakes made in a sheet pan. The first two were placed side by side and covered with a homemade mixed berry jam then the other two cakes were layered on top. The edges were trimmed to make them even. Next we placed a sheet of parchment paper on top and roughly drew a figure 8 for the race track. the width of the road was about 3 inches. We cut out the track shape and placed it on top of the cake then used a knife to lightly carve an outline of the track onto the cake.

To make a bridge we made a vanilla box cake in a 9x13 pan. After it cooled we removed it from the pan and froze it. It is really easy to cut frozen cake with a serrated knife. We cut the cake into two 13 in strips the width of the road and stacked them with a layer of Nutella between them.
We carved this into a concave hill and placed it on the base cake with a layer of Nutella as the glue.

Using the trace marks as a guide we used a chocolate butter cream frosting died black to make the road. This frosting started out a medium gray but got much darker and was black by the time we got to the party.

Using a plain buttercream frosting that we died green we did a crumb coat of frosting on the rest of the base cake.

Then we piped in grass using a basket weave decorating tip.

We added black frosting to the tunnel and then did the rest of the bridge in a gray frosting which will be the mortar to the bricks.
Using the left over frozen cake from the bridge piece we made a winner’s podium and iced it in blue.

Using the basket weave tip we made the bricks on the bridge the red and white checks on the road as well as the checkered flag on the winner’s podium.

We also used a round tip to add place numbers to the podium.

Next came the cars! We used this cake pan to make the cars. Instead of frosting each car we just died the cake mix using Wilton food coloring.

We cut one of the cars in half and placed it so it looked like it was coming out of the tunnel.

Lastly we decorated the cars. Piping on windshields, head and taillights and bumpers. We used mini Oreos and Nilla wafers as tires. We also placed some stacks of oreos around the track.

 

Whadya think? The party was EPIC and there's more details we must show you, so keep a look out. The only downside is that now we're not sure how we will top it next year....but I'm sure we'll figure it out. ;)