Race Track Cake

My oldest gingersnap turned four last week!  I get excited about making fun birthday cakes for my kids.  In keeping with tradition (second birthday and third birthday), my son requested a transportation-themed cake that was pretty simple to put together and could be adapted for any age.  We found several race track cake pictures online, but this is the one he wanted . . .

I started with a 9x13 pan of cake, thanks to the help of Betty Crocker.  I made a "four" stencil using an empty cereal box and cut out the shape while it was still in the pan.  After transferring the four onto a large jelly roll pan covered with wax paper, I went at it with the icing, using small ziplocs with a tiny hole cut in the corner for the yellow and black outlines.  The icing mess was an easy clean-up by cutting away the wax paper.  The "race flag" is sharpie on white paper.  Finally, I found a highly skilled and experienced car owner to select and place four race cars on the track.

He told me it looked exactly like what he wanted, which is all I was going for.  We had fun eating it, too!