Coolest Cars Willy's Butte Dirt Track Cake 8

by Mariah Strickland
(Pell City, AL)

Willy's Butte Dirt Track Cake

I wanted to do a Cars cake for my son's 3rd birthday, but ended up with not a lot of time. I used the Willy's butte idea from another submitter who submitted a Cars Willy's Butte Dirt Track cake and changed a few things.

I used one 9x13 and two round 9" cakes (two cake mixes total). The actual "butte" is some caramel popcorn cakes cut up and stacked on a wooden dowel then covered in icing. I like to use the Wilton buttercream icing because you have a thick consistency for some things and it's easy to thin out for spreading. I also like that it's really white which makes tinting a little easier.

So, I cut the round cakes in half and placed them on either end of the rectangle and used a bread knife to sort of sculpt the insides of the round cakes so they'd look more like the canyon wall. I used icing tinted with a little bit of brown coloring gel to cover the whole cake.

I then used corn syrup to thin some dark brown icing and a paint brush to draw lines to look like the cracks and crevices in the rock wall. I loved the other submitter's idea to crush up graham crackers to make the surface look like sand. I left some pretty coarse so it would look like rocks around the bottom. I think that part turned out pretty well!

I finished the cake with a few green icing cacti and tufts of grass. (I kind of struggled with the scale being so far off, but, like I said, I was short on time). Then a brand new "Dirt Track McQueen" went of top and doubled as a gift for the birthday boy. I was going to put Sherrif on there, too, but it just seemed like too much.

Hope you like my first submission!