My nephew wants a "cars" theme cake. how do you make the car 3D? like some of animals that are in the contest...how do you make them? Are they cake or are they fondant/gumpaste? I know the smaller ones are that, but how about the bigger animals? Like the fish on the plate or the turtle that's sitting up? are they cake? It just amazes me the creativity of everyone. And I wanna be like that-when i grow up!!!

There are several threads with this same question. (Kids sure love Lightning, huh?)
Here are a few links that should help you out.

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-604964-lightning.html+mcqueen

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-625498-lightning.html+mcqueen

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-190601-lightning.html+mcqueen

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-582923-lightning.html+mcqueen

HTH and Good Luck!

I found the lightening mcqueen car easy to do. I stacked a couple sheets of cake and just whacked at it to get the basic shape. I used donuts for the tires and extra cake pieces to add the extra humps and bumps I forgot. My nephew didn't want us to cut into it. http://www.cakegeek.com/images/LM_300.jpg

Hey thanks for all the tips- can't wait to make it now. parties not til august...so can't wait!!

I'm doing a Cars cake this week. I've got the 3D car pan that I've used a few times before (used it to make "Herbie" once, that was fun). But, looking through pictures here, I decided not to go the 3D route this time. I usually LOVE doing 3D things adn there are some really cool ones pictured here. But there's some other cute Cars cakes too. I finally decided there are two parts to the movie - Radiator Springs and then the racing scenes. I'm going to do two stacked layers and make the bottom look like Radiator Springs on the sides with a torn up road around that layer (because LM got stuck in RS because he had to repair the main road through town that he tore up). The second layer I'll put the black and white around the tier and maybe carve a couple slanted sections and use sprinkles to make it look like people/cars in the stands (an idea I got here) with the racetrack going around that layer. I want to make the Piston Cup out of RKT and put on top. If they wanted a larger cake (and I wasn't also doing Dr. Seuss this week), I might do the 3D car and put on top of the cake.

At first, I wasn't excited at all about this cake. My ds was never into Cars and it took me forever to come up with an idea because the 3D car just wasn't exciting me for some reason. Now that I thought through doing these two tiers I'm getting excited about starting it today.

Here is one that I made I used the wiltons 3D pan and carved out what needed to be carve out used butter cream frosting and air brushed it
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1251356

Molly

Here's a tutorial I did on the Lightning McQueen cake I made.

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-604964.html

I also did the 3-d McQueen cake in march for my sons birthday it was actualy easier than I thought! I used 3 9x13 cakes layered them then carved the car shape. I used MMF for winsheild,and details, buttercream for the rest. For the "spoiler" on the back I used graham crackers that I 'glued' on with buttercream. Check my pics to see the result!
Have fun it was a great cake to make! It was my first 3-D cake and my first 'Fancy' specialty cake ever so if I coukd do it successfully anyone can!!!

Have fun! oh and my son loooved it!
Ashley

I also did the 3-d McQueen cake in march for my sons birthday it was actualy easier than I thought! I used 3 9x13 cakes layered them then carved the car shape. I used MMF for winsheild,and details, buttercream for the rest. For the "spoiler" on the back I used graham crackers that I 'glued' on with buttercream and donuts for the tires. Check my pics to see the result!
Have fun it was a great cake to make! It was my first 3-D cake and my first 'Fancy' specialty cake ever so if I coukd do it successfully anyone can!!!

Have fun! oh and my son loooved it!
Ashley