I need a simple tutorial on how to make a car cake for my son's 3rd birthday......


Any advice would be appreciated!!!!

http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/car-cake.html

or

http://www.how2cakes.com/3dcar.html

Good luck, some one asked me to make one too. But now I need to figure out how much each will serve?

Does it have to be a Cars character or a specific model of car, or can it just be a sort of generic car shape?

Since you emphasized the "simple" I assume you don't necessarily have pro-level tools or skills, so if the cake merely has to please a bunch of 3 year olds then you don't need to get too complicated with the carving. I made one a few years ago for my son by pretty much just stacking a square cake on top of a rectangular cake, and then cutting corners off at a slant. Once the overall shape looked about right, cut wheel wells. Frosted the window areas white first, then the rest of the car with birthday boy's favorite color. I used cookies for the tires/wheels, and decorated the car with simple stripes and numbers (birthday boy's age) piped on.

The key things for the basic shape were to bake the bottom rectangle taller than the top square -- if they are the same height layers, the proportions don't look right -- and to cut a strip off the long side of the rectangle, because a race car has an overall narrower shape than any typical sheet pan size. (I cut a 10x15 down to more like 8.5x15, and then cut the extra strip of cake into squares and served them individually like cupcakes, with an extra "tire" cookie on top of each one.)

For the spoiler I frosted a strip of graham cracker, and just stuck it on top of a couple piles of BC.

The cake was simpler and much more "homey" than what I might be able to do now, but my son and the party guests loved it and it didn't require any very special equipment or techniques.

Holly

It wasn't as fancy as some I've seen here, but I took a 9x13 cake, cut it in half and used the other half to make the top of the car and spoiler. I covered it with marshmallow fondant and used oreo's for the wheels. I brown/tan marbeled some fondant for the ground and scattered some brown rock candy on it (it's candy coated chocolate that looks like rocks).