High Octane Lightning McQueen Cake Ideas
For Your Disney Cars Party

You can get some great Lightning McQueen cake inspirations
and ideas right here!

You've decided you want to take on the challenge of creating a Lightning McQueen cake, the centerpiece for this birthday party.

Even before getting your party supplies, explore the different cake options you have, depending on the number of guests you want to invite over. Many talented bakers have come up with imaginative designs that are inspirational enough to give us our own ideas of what's possible to create for the big day.

Do you want a McQueen cake shaped like the car himself or a square or round cake with a large image of him? Another possibility is to have a round or square cake with a Lightning McQueen topper or other plastic toy figure you can keep and play with later.

Let's explore each of these ideas in more detail.

Photo credit: All About Craft

This photo on the right gives you step-by-step instructions on how to make a Lightning McQueen cake look just like the car himself. Here are the directions:

1. Have your cake in blocks in the general car shape.

2. Use a photocopy of the car in the actual size you want to carve out.

3. Shape the cake as carefully as you can. Getting this step right will make your cake turn out perfectly.

4. Spread chocolate ganache or butter cream on your cake to make the fondant stick.

5. Cover the cake with red fondant.

6. This photo shows the black fondit details such as the tires, bumpers and mouth.

7. The finished cake, complete with Lightning McQueen stickers. (Which are a challenge to find!)

The next Lightning McQueen cake was created by frozen butter cream transfer. Here are the steps to create a cake like this one for your own party!

Photo credit: Jen's Cakes

Find a picture online or in a coloring book of the character you want to replicate in icing and blow it up to the correct size to fit the cake shape.

Once you have the correct size, you lay down a sheet of freezer-safe glass over the picture. Now you tape some wax paper over the top of the glass.

Trace the outline of the picture with a #1 or #2 tip with black icing, beginning with the more difficult, more detailed areas first.

Then fill in the picture with the icing colors you wish. This icing color set will help you get just the right color when frosting your Lightning McQueen cake.

Once you've filled in your entire piece, place it in the freezer for up to 30 minutes so the frosting can firm up.

Remove the tape from the glass, then flip the picture over onto the cake, then carefully remove the wax paper from the transfer. Many cake artists like to pipe in a border around the transfer picture .

Wilton Cars Cake Pan

To add more dimension to your cake without the complexity of a butter cream transfer, you might want to check out this Lightning McQueen cake pan by Wilton.

Reviewers on Amazon say that it works well and takes one box of cake mix. The details such as the lightning bolt and the headlights are difficult to see in the baked cake, but not too difficult to work with. One reviewer stated that she could not write "Happy Birthday" on the cake, so she baked a sheet cake and put the Lightning McQueen cake on top for a 3D effect. She decorated the sheet cake behind like Radiator Springs and wrote the birthday message, so it sounds like it turned out really cute!

Here are some more cake ideas: there are some great looking McQueen cake toppers and candles available. This Disney Cars cake topper is Lightning McQueen and Mater which you can make as part of a fancy frosting design on a sheet cake or a simple, or keep it simple and easy and they look great on their own.

Add even more pizzazz to the candles on the cake with a cool looking Cars candle! This one is Lightning McQueen next to a cactus. This candle adds lots of color and character to your Lightning McQueen cake.

Photo courtesy of: Love.Your.Cake

Another popular option parents choose is to serve cupcakes instead of or in addition to the traditional birthday cake. There are some really cool ideas out there like this Mater and Lightning McQueen cake and cupcakes set. This person created a Lightning McQueen cake and has his racing number 95 as the orange and red cupcakes to go with it.

Are cupcakes perking your interest yet? There are some fantastic toppers available that the party guests can keep for themselves as party favors when they go home. This Lightning McQueen small cupcake topper comes in a set of 12. Want more characters? Here's a similar Lightning McQueen with his friend Mater that comes in a package of six.

This set of McQueen And Mater cupcake rings come in a set of 12. Bake your cupcakes in these cute Disney Cars baking cups.

You're going to have revved-up Lightning McQueen cake for your party now!