Lightning Does Strike Twice

It's nice to get compliments. They're even better when they come from people you don't know! That's how this cake came about. Tonia was a guest at Abby's princess party a few weeks ago and was impressed enough to send me an email to tell me so. And to request that I make her son's 3rd birthday cake.

The theme of the day is Cars. Ironically, the same theme as the other cake that was made the weekend of Abby's birthday. I generally don't like to entirely replicate a cake, but in this case Tonia asked that Lightning McQueen be incorporated somehow. So I opted to use similar ideas as the previous cake, but showcased them differently so that Keenan could say this cake was his.

I've recently started experimenting with "pop-up" images on cakes (as opposed to the totally flat) which is what I did with the famous Cars character here. Somehow it brings out the character better so I think it's a method worth sticking to despite how tedious it is! Anyways, here's Keenan's chocolate cake filled with Oreo crumb buttercream. I almost wish there were some scraps of this left over. Although on second thought, with the amount of cake that I see on a regular basis it's probably better that there are no scraps!

On a side note, people often talk about the "small world" syndrome and I've had my share of these "small world" experiences. In an interesting twist, when Tonia showed up to pick up her cake it turned out that we had a mutual friend in common who was in no way responsible for sending her my way. A reminder that maybe I should call this mutual friend sometime soon as it's been too long! Funny how connections are made...

Happy birthday to Keenan! I hope it's memorable!