Richard Scarry-Inspired Sneaker Car Cake!

The very excellent Robin emailed me with a request: a special cake for her little cutie Henry (also known as Auggie) who was turning 1, and for her hubby Brady, who was turning 40. But she couldn't decide on lion themed (Leo birthdays!), or shoe themed -- because Henry adores shoelaces. We also threw around the idea of having a Richard Scarry themed shoe car. So we came up with a compromise -- a shoe cake that was also a CAR with two little lions driving it! Perfect!

I think I ground my teeth on this idea from the minute the sneaker car cake was decided upon. I'd never made a shoe cake before, but I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted it to look like. My intention was to work on it way before the deadline, but of course orders pile up and suddenly the day is upon me!!

I made the cake using three large vanilla sheet cakes and 1 7 inch round vanilla cake. I had it all piled up on top of each other with the layers frosted in between and holding my serrated knife, I said out loud... "Now what!" I realized that my particular design sense could come into play here and I could create something that was much more cartoon-like than super realistic. So I started carving something that looked sort of like a shoe and sort of like a car... haha... I was sweatin' it big time. It was only after I had finished frosting the entire thing a few times with buttercream and had rolled out and adhered the massive piece of hand-tinted blue fondant to it that I let out a little yelp of glee -- I could really see it coming together at that point... but too bad I only had 2 hours left to work on it... !!

Details I loved: the exhaust pipe puffing out black exhaust, the shoelaces flying to the side (they're going fast! - my husband's idea!) and the stripe motif -- if I had had more time, I would've made the lion outfits stripey. :)

Haha. I loved how it all turned out in the end... the cake was pretty huge actually, 40 pounds and probably could feed 50 guests! The cake was so cute it made me laugh and I didn't want to give it up, I wanted to keep it an shellac it -- always a good sign for me. And how cute is freakin' Henry... he looks like a perfect blond German baby from the 1950s, I think. For some reason he looks like a baby from olden times.

Happy Birthday Auggie and Brady! :)