I need some advice as this is quite a challenge! It's my first order outside of the family and for a sculpted cake (eek!). So I'm told it needs to be lighting mcqueen for about 30 kids.

Now my most appraised recipe takes 3 cups of flour, 3 eggs 3 cups of liquid and 3/4 cup of oil. The biggest pan I've got is roughly 9" by 13". The cake doesn't rise much in this size, so do I double the recipe or bake two cakes? I've seen that most recipes for this cake says to use 2 rectangular and a square cake.

I was wondering if this would be big enough, and which colouring to use? I'll be making marshmallow fondant and think that I'll need a LOT of red liquid food colouring. I have some black powder left from a previous bake, so I'll probably use that for black. But would gel colouring giv a brighter colour with a smaller amount, or would I also need more than one container (around here it's sold in little pots and are quite pricy)?

Thanks in advance  

Ahttp://sugarsweetcakesandtreats.blogspot.com/2010/11/recipe-red-marshmallow-fondant-mmf.html

Here's a post about making darker colored fondant. I have no idea how much cake your recipe will produce, you probably should before you price a cake for someone else. I since you need a larger cake, I'd go with your plan.

Carve a little at a time and it's easier to carve a cold cake. I suggest using a template, print out different sides and angles of the design you need.

Thanks so much, this link helps a lot! As I mentioned the cake rises only a little (no more than 2 inches), so I'll probably bake 2 seperate cakes (plus the square). It works fine in the round tins (I guess they're also about 9"), but the client really would like this thing carved (I hope the teacher cuts decent little squares ). So I'm baking in advance and freezing it a little, as I know it then works easier.

Oh yes, and I just figured out the template thing, and found some pics I can resize, thanks for the tip, as i don't think I'm that good at scaling objects (I once tried enlarging a drawing of an alsation and it ended up with the body length of a daschund)