I need to do a cake of a building and surrounding area.

I thought it would be neat to have cars in the lot but can't decide if I should buy chocolate molds or do cookies.

The choc would be 3D but the cutters I would use again. Also, how would I get the cookies to stand up? The base will be thick foam core.

Any ideas on this? I need to nail this. Thanks!

I think that I would buy the molds or try to model the cars from gumpaste. Or you could just buy cars to put in the parking lot.

I would probably try to mode them l out of gum paste. That way I wouldn't have to spend money on any molds or cutters.

If you want to be really whimsical about it, Whimsical Bakehouse does chocolate techniques that are very cute. You would outline in brown chocolate melts and then "color" in with other colored candy melts. Check out their site. Here's another that explains it a little (hope this works):

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sjoaX-4RVa8/Rmjhgon3i7I/AAAAAAAAAfw/DJmKawZf2h4/s400/IMG_7561.JPG&imgrefurl=http://bakingthegrade.blogspot.com/2007/06/edible-art.html&usg=__FubBuHmgvIDQNw7RB-Tb4SEhWtU=&h=300&w=400&sz=30&hl=en&start=140&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=qW5J8QG63Mc84M:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dwhimsical%2Bbakehouse%2Bchocolate%2Btechniques%2522%26start%3D126%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Den%26ndsp%3D21%26tbs%3Disch:1

Scroll down to the snails. Good luck!

Thanks all! I haven't done much modeling so I am not sure how it would turn out. Buying cars is certainly an idea, I may do just that depending on how my time is running.

Thanks again for replying!

Or you could find a car clip art design that you like and use a color flow or royal icing flood to fill it in. To stand them up, you could place a bit of gum paste or even a few dot of royal icing behind...depending on what your base is made of, you could sink a few tooth picks or popsicle sticks and then "glue" the cars to them w/ royal.

I just did a racetrack cake for my son's bday and found little peanut butter filled chocolate cars. They were little Nascar's, but you could take the foil wrapping off and they would just look like little chocolate cars. HTH

Thanks again! These are all great ideas and I appreciate it so much!

I ran across this car tutorial on a different thread. Thought it might help you.

http://www.cakejournal.com/archives/how-to-make-a-race-car-cake-topper