Truett's 5th Birthday 'Car' Cake, Wilton Style - A Cowboy's Wife (2024)

Oh man, making a car themed cake was more of a task than I thought but I have narrowed my issues down to a couple of things that I’ll get to a little later. Truett turned 5 years old today and all I could think about was when my two oldest were that age…and how grown they are now. That means time will fly by again and Truett will be a Senior in no time.

Anyhoo, I decided to make Truett a car themed cake. And that was issue number 1. I really didn’t plan ahead. I was like, “ooohh, it will be fun to make Truett some kind of car cake”….the night before his birthday party. I know, I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants gal huh. I quickly knew I couldn’t make a real car cake because I didn’t have the pan and I sure ain’t talented enough to carve one out of layers of cake. I had seen a track done before using a number 5 so I went that route. I found my big Wilton cake pan and used it, 12x18x2 I believe. I gathered all the supplies and began. You can find most of these supplies at Walmart in their Wilton section!

(You can click on the photos to make them bigger if you like)

SUPPLIES

• Wilton’s Cake Pan, measuring 12 x 18 x 2
• Wilton’s Grass Tip #233 with icing bag
• Wilton’s Ready-Made Fondant and/or make your own (marshmallows and powdered sugar)
• Wilton’s Icing Colors
• Wilton’s Ready-to-Use Decorator Icing (the big bucket did all the grass and iced the whole cake)
• 3 cake mixes
• and I forget to add things here, I’ll list them throughout the post!

First, I used the pan insert to make a ‘5’ template since it was the exact size of the pan obviously, then cut it out. I laid it on the cake to make sure it looked good. I mixed all three cake mixes just like the directions said and baked the cake. One cake mix equals about 4-6 cups of batter. This pan uses 14 cups of batter which is how I got the 3.

I cooled the cake, iced it with the decorator icing, and put it in the fridge overnight.

It was now time to make the fondant for the track. Oy. The last two times I was suppposed to attend Wilton events, I had other personal things going on so I missed out on the fondant learning experience. Since I know my good friend Cat is awesome at making anything, I seeked out her video on how to make marshmallow fondant.

I greased up my bowl, surface, and spatula. I melted my marshmallows (160z bag) and put in my icing color, which is issue #2 came into effect. I had no idea how hard it would be to make black colored fondant. GRRRRRR! I didn’t want to add too much because I didn’t want a bitter taste. Had I planned ahead, I could have searched for this and the best way to get it black but since I didn’t, I went with the flow. I added some black, brown, and a tiny bit of royal blue. The longer it set, the more dark grey (pavement like) color it got.

I kneaded it and rolled it out. I laid my template on it and cut the 5 out.

To get the 5 on the cake without it tearing, I gently folded it in half, picked it up, and placed it on the cake.

I used the yellow ready-to-use fondant for the road. I just rolled it out and used a pizza cutter to make the strips, placing them down the road.

Now, had I been able to make a true black, I would have done the sides with a black and white checkboard effect but since I couldn’t, I decided to do it all in green grass. Simple fix yes? I did this pretty sloppy I reckon but I was ready to be done. I colored what icing I had left in my bucket with Wilton’s Kelly Green Icing Color. It darkened over time as well. I placed it in my bag and used tip #233.

I was able to do 3 sides of the cake with green grass before running out of icing so I just hid the other side!! LOL And this is the final product! I placed 5 cars along the road with a candle on each car. I used Cat’s other tip about melting the bottom of the candle just enough for it to stick to the car. This was a great tip since it doesn’t hurt the car at all! We lit the candles and made a wish!!

It’s not perfect but like my facebook friend Kassie said, “anything made with Love is perfect”…….

Thank you Wilton for teaching me all that I do know because while this and I’m sure any cakes I do are a challenge, it’s fun to see the end result and make something for my kids, from my heart.