Pickup Truck Cupcake Pull Apart Cake for a Second Birthday

Wow! This is my 200th published blog post! 

A Family Project

I am a happy Grammy! Getting to make a cupcake pull apart cake for my grandson Ashton was a lot of fun! 

Ashley, my daughter, talked to me in December about making Ashton's birthday cake. Ashley was trying to decide between a John Deere tractor cake, a pickup truck cake, or a pickup truck cupcake pull apart cake. 

I sent Ashley several cake pictures for her to choose from. Ultimately, she choose a pickup truck, cupcake pull apart cake. I had never made a pull apart cake with cupcakes. However, I knew it should be easier than the camouflaged teddy bear cake that I made for Ashton's first birthday. 

Details in Above Picture

• To make black fondant, start with chocolate fondant, dye the fondant black with gel food coloring. I used Wilton gel food coloring.
• Two inch black fondant circles were cut using a cookie cutter.
• Letters and number were piped onto the two inch circles with a #5 decorating tip. 
• The "bolt" details on the wheels, bumper, and door handle were made by taking the narrow end of the #5 frosting tip and poking it into rolled out gray fondant. 
• Then gently remove the fondant from the tip with a toothpick.
• The next step was to roll the small pieces of fondant into a ball, place the tiny balls of fondant where desired, and then gently flatten them into place with a fingertip.

Making a Cereal Treat Tire

• Make one batch of cereal treats.
•  Butter the inside of two - five inch bowls.
• Pack each bowl with about two inches of cereal treat mix. Pack the remaining treat mix into a buttered eight or nine inch cake pan and reward yourself with cereal treats later.
• Remove slightly cooled, molded rounds from the bowls and place wide end down.
•  Form a dent into the narrow end to be the "wheel" later. The shape the round into a wheel shape. 
• Each marshmallow cereal treat tire received fondant "treads" before covering the entire wheel with chocolate fondant that was tinted black with gel coloring.
• I used a small, square cookie cutter to form the fondant "tread". Each black fondant square will yield three tire treads. First, cut a square of fondant out. Second, move the cutter diagonally and cut a chevron shape out of the fondant square. Repeat a third time. 

• My cake board is 28 inches by 28 inches. I made it from heavy cardboard and covered it with aluminum foil.
• I used prepackaged cake mixes to make the 29 chocolate and vanilla cupcakes that form the truck body.
• Aluminum cupcake liners would have looked nice, but I was out of them. I decided to remove the white paper liners so the children did not have to contend with them.
• Each cupcake was frosted and put into place on the cake board. I used a picture to help me with placement.
• After all the frosted cupcakes were in place, I filled in the small gaps between the cupcakes with more frosting to create the cake top.
• A final coat of frosting was smoothed onto the cake top using a long, narrow spatula.

The frosted pickup truck cake with rolled butter cream fondant details in place. 

Rolled buttercream fondant recipe            Click here

Buttercream frosting recipe                          Click here