Monster Truck Cake

In honor of my most pinned pin, and because I promised to some time ago.  Yeah, photo albums and race recaps aren't the only things I flake on.

Here is a step by step post about how I made my first monster truck cake.

When my nephew turned three, I promised I would make his cake.  His instructions were to build a monster truck with flames that was running over spiders and shooting webs.  Tall order!

I talked him down a little, but I decided to go all out and try to build this truck.  I was currently watching Ace of Cakes a lot back then, so rice krispies had become my new best cake tool.

So I carved a rice krispie truck from a giant hunk of rice krispies and put it in the fridge to harden up again.  It was almost exactly the size of a loaf of bread.  In fact, I think I had smooshed two bread pan sized rice krispies together and then carved from there.  

Once I was sure the truck was solid, I started frosting it.  I was tired of fondant by then, and too nervous to try it on a new kind of cake trick.

I added sprinkles for the sparkle and shine.  In hindsight, I wouldn't do that again, but... live and learn.

My favorite part, the cupcake tires.   It takes a lot of black food coloring to get that deep black frosting.  I used the giant sprinkles for the lug nuts.  In another hindsight, I wouldn't use cupcakes as tires.  It was a cake construction nightmare.  The wrapper part showed, so I wrapped them in tin foil.  Then, the cupcake wasn't strong enough to hold up the five pounds of rice krispies, so the cake was loaded with dowels and toothpicks to keep it all together.  

I would totally make the tire cupcakes again, but as a stand alone treat.

I used more cupcakes for rocks on top of a two cake layers that I trimmed to look more like a hill.

Next came the spiders and webs.  I compromised by using webs as the border, since I don't have the technical savvy to create a web shooting rice krispie truck.  I flattened some of the spiders with a giant toy truck tire for effect.

I'm pretty sure Leilee did a little bit of taste testing.

When we arrived at the restaurant, I put the truck together on top of the cake.  It was kind of wobbly and probably wouldn't have lasted on the drive into town.

For some reason, these pictures aren't very good quality, but I hope that those who were interested in the tire cupcakes see what came of it all.  

And, as usual.  When I post a cake, I always hope it won't end up on Cakewrecks!