Racetrack Cake

Here is the cake that I made for Degen's birthday party! I needed a cake to feed a crowd and wanted something that would maintain the 'Cars' theme of the party. I saw an idea for a racetrack cake on Pinterest and decided that I would do something with that. To make my oval track, I baked one round and one square cake (using one cake mix). I wanted to make the cake a little more special so I colored the batter, but it didn't turn out as well as I wanted because the color was not dark enough. (I am planning on trying this again with Kyrie's cake and hope it turns out better.) I tried a new kind of filling for this cake, which I also found on Pinterest (yeah, I'm a bit of a Pin-head!). The filling was very easy to make because it was only three ingredients: cool whip, pudding mix and milk (1/2 the amount called for to make the pudding). I spread it on the cake and gave the leftovers to the kids who ate it right up!

I made one and a half batches of my traditional buttercream icing to cover the cake. (I did not want to take a chance that I would run out like I did with my last cake.) I used most of the icing to cover the cake, but reserved about 1/3 to dye green. After I had my base on, I spread on my crushed Oreos (I used only the tops of the Oreos and ground them using a Magic Bullet). The cookie crumbs were very fine and pretty messy. I added a marshmallow wall by wetting the bottom of the mini-marshmallows and sticking them on the icing. I finished spreading out the cookie crumbs and stuck on peanut butter m&ms using icing to border the other side of the track. Then I added green grass into the center of the racetrack and used the same tip & green icing to make a bottom border (this technique also did well in incorporating the cookie crumbs that spilled over the side of the cake because it looked like dirt for the grass border). I added Degen's name to the center and then stuck on 3 of Degen's toy cars to the track. This cake was another success, and I got a lot of compliments about the filling from our party guests!