How to Put Together Cupcakes to Make a Lightning McQueen Cake

Delight party guests with a character-inspired cupcake cake

Rev up your engines and make a quick and easy cupcake Lighting McQueen cake. Your kids will really love seeing one of their favorite characters come to life in cupcake form. Get them involved in helping you put this cake together for a fun family activity.

Things You'll Need

• Cupcakes
• White icing
• Food coloring (black, red, yellow, blue)
• Spatula
• Piping bags
• Icing tips
• Cake board
• Pencil

Instructions

1. Trace the shape of Lightning McQueen's body onto the cake board. Place the cupcakes onto the cake board, beginning from the center of your outlined design working your way outward to the edge of your design. When placing the cupcakes remember to apply a small amount of icing to the bottom of each cupcake, so it will stick to the cake board.

2. Separate the white icing into in five different mixing bowls. You will need to make different color icing by mixing the food coloring into each bowl of icing. Set a bowl of white icing aside so you will need plain white icing later to make the eyes. Once your red, black, yellow and blue icings are ready you can move on to piping.

3. Drop an icing tip into the bottom of the piping bag and place it such that the tip pokes out from the bottom of the piping bag, do this for all of your piping bags. Fill the piping bag with red icing and pipe the icing all over the surface of your cupcakes. Smooth the red icing with a spatula. Fill a piping bag with black icing and pipe the outline of the car body, face, lightning rod, numbers and tires.

4. Fill in the windshield, mouth and windows with white icing. Smooth the white icing over. Fill in the lightning rod design with yellow icing and the number design with red. Make Lightning McQueen's eye's using blue icing.

5. Fill in the tires using black icing and make hubcaps for the tires using the red icing. Go over the outlines of Lightning McQueen's face and designs using black icing. The black icing outline will help you better define these features and will also cover up any slight mistakes.

References

• "Hello, Cupcake!: Irresistibly Playful Creations Anyone Can Make"; Karen Tack, et.al; 2008