Making a Cupcake Cake

A request from a friend - "Can you make a Cars Cupcake Cake?" I am not a cake decorator & I have never made a cupcake cake. I had never even seen one & had just recently heard them mentioned. I was not quite sure if I even liked the idea. Of course I googled it and found that they are also called "pull apart cakes." I guess some people want the look of a decorated cake but feel that it's easier as there is no cutting involved. It sounds a little messy to me but this cake is for a little boy who loves "Cars" and his mom is a dear friend of mine.

I originally wanted to arrange the cupcakes in the shape of one of the cars but since the order called for only 20, it would not work. I found a picture and enlarged it to fit on the assembled cake.

The easiest part - baking the cupcakes. I tried a new recipe - using Billy's Bakery Vanilla Cupcake Recipe and this is now my fav! The cupcakes were very light and not too sweet.
I used my usual Vanilla Frosting Recipe which is from Magnolia Bakery.

Once cool, I put a dab of frosting on each cupcake so they would not slide on the board and placed them as close together as possible on the cake board. You want to try and keep the spaces between each cupcake as small as possible so you don't end up wasting a lot of frosting.

Next using a pastry bag, outline the cake with the frosting and then fill in each space between cupcakes. Finally add the rest of the frosting and spread evenly over the cupcakes. Don't worry about the sides. I found cute cupcake wrappers from the Cars Movie and they looked perfect!

Now for the picture.
Take a piece of wax paper and place it over the picture you want on the cake. Tape it down so it will not slide.
Using a pastry bag with a #3 decorators tip, outline the picture using the color you want to decorate with. I used red. Next carefully take the wax paper, position over the cake and place it on top. Gently smooth the outline of the picture onto the cake but do not press too hard as it will smear.

Remember the picture will face in the opposite direction.

You can then take a small star tip and fill in the outline of the picture. I did not do this. I am not a food coloring person and unless I had the natural coloring, which I did not, I really didn't think the kids at the party needed to be eating red food coloring. The outline was perfect and the mom was happy about not using all the color. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned substitutes for this.

I added little sugar Cars I found at Party City and finisihed it off with a "Happy Birthday"

I think it was ok, the kids loved it, the birthday boy was happy and the adults said the cupcakes were delicious!

Let me know what you think!

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