Race Car Birthday

My daughter turned four today.  She's not a baby anymore, that's for sure.  She wanted to do a race car theme.  She's my little tomboy- in love with all things cars, and it's funny because my little boy loves all things tea party.  Grandma bought him his own play tea set this year and he was jumping up and down yelling YAY, he was so excited.  Go figure.

We had a big party last year and I didn't really want to do the whole thing again- activities, lunch, cake... too much work.  We put out the kiddie pool with a slip n' slide and had that be the activity.  Nobody cared that it wasn't race car related, especially since it was 105 degrees today.  HOT. 

For a while I thought about just buying a race car cake at the Walmart bakery, but I usually think their frosting is yucky.  I googled for ideas instead.

Since we were just doing cake and ice cream and not a lunch or anything fancy, I made the coolest cake I could find.  I've only made one other birthday cake ever.  I'm not a big fan of cake, but this one turned out great.  Youtube is my friend when it comes to trying new projects, and I watched a few videos about layer cakes before starting.

Here's the link to the One Ginormous Adventure racecar cake tutorial that I used as inspiration.  Instead of piping on all that green frosting... uh... no way... too much work... I colored some coconut green to make grass.  This is the frosting recipe I used from Our Best Bites.  It was perfect- not too sweet or overwhelming.  I didn't add any extra cocoa powder since the cake is already chocolate.  One batch was enough to cover this whole cake.

The cake is chocolate cake mix from a Betty Crocker box.  Between the layers of cake, I used a can of coconut pecan frosting like you normally use on a German Chocolate cake.  It was nice to have something different inside the cake, not just more frosting.

The adorable little fondant race cars came from Lady Cupcake's Corner on etsy.  They were a big hit and they tasted good too.  All the little kids were so excited to eat them, and they all wanted to pick which color they got on their slice of cake.

The little checkered flags on the cake are a 3x5 index card cut the long way and folded around a toothpick.  I colored the black boxes on with a sharpie.

For a table covering, I bought one black and one white cheap 97 cent plastic tablecloth.  I cut one into strips long wise, using the tiles on my kitchen floor as a cutting guide.  The other one was cut into strips the short way.  I wove them together to make a checkered flag.  Then I ran a few strips of clear mailing tape across to hold it all together.  I put the tape side down so you can't see it.  Not bad for two bucks.

My daughter had a really good time.  What kid wouldn't love a race car cake with a kiddie pool and slip n' slide?  We had so much fun.