Monster Truck Birthday Cake

For Lincoln's third birthday, the kid wanted a monster truck birthday cake.  So, of course, I had to oblige. 

 

Unlike last year, I didn't take very many pictures of the process.  I did take a few to show how to make a monster truck fly over the cars on the cake, though.  And at the end of the post, I have a quick list of the cake basics.

Making a Monster Truck Fly

First buy a monster truck and some bamboo kebab skewers. The matchbox brand of monster trucks have the following handy quality if you're using them for this purpose: a random hole in the bottom of the frame.

I don't know why, but I'm not going to question it.  Check that your skewer will fit (flat side pointing in):

Now take the skewer out for a minute and squirt a nice glob of hot glue into that hole.  Now quickly insert the skewer, hold it as straight as possible, and wait for the glue to dry (about a minute):

 And seriously, that's it.  Now break off however much you want to depending on how high your cake is, and stick it in the cake over the cars or the "road" or what-have-you.  (It's not a coincidence that I used the superman truck for this part, either.) 

(Note: If I do this again, I think I want to paint the skewer brown or black so it doesn't stand out so much.)

Lincoln loved his cake and couldn't wait to finally get to blow out the candles:

And then I suppose it shouldn't have surprised us that the kids thought they needed to drive the cars on the road:

All in all, a culinary birthday success!

Quick Cake Info:

• 2 stacked 9x13" cakes (I used a boxed vanilla cake on the bottom and chocolate on top with canned cream cheese frosting in the middle)
• Buttercream crumb coat
• Sides are frosted with wilton buttercream and then sprinkled.  The best info I could find about how to apply the sprinkles was to just kind of throw the sprinkles on.  I found it worked best to put them in a little bowl, cup a few in my fingers, and then try to gently pat them on.  Then I wet the tips of my finger to pick up the sprinkles that had fallen and added them to the cake.  I also worked in sections around the cake.  (And I realized that I definitely don't have the patience to achieve something like this.)
• Whip canned chocolate frosting and then apply to the cake top.
• Scrape filling off of oreos and then coarsely grind the remaining cookie.  I used about a third of a package and had more than enough.  Use a big spoon to apply the cookie crumbs across the diagonal.
• Press (washed) matchbox cars into the crumbs.
• Add the monster trucks, happy birthday banner, and candles.

That's about it.  Let me know if you have any questions!  And if anyone uses any of these ideas, I'd love to see the results!