Vintage Bug Cake and Flying Wiener Dog

What is the connection between a vintage Bug cake and a flying wiener dog? Keep reading to find out.

Last weekend was my youngest daughter’s 13th birthday. Usually she comes up with a very specific cake request for me, such as the year she wanted a baby grand piano with a hamster, playing an electric guitar. This year, though, she told me she wanted me to surprise her. After thinking through all her favorite things and talking with her older sister about it, I decided to make her dream car, a vintage VW Bug, and combine it with her new favorite sport, surfing. This was an easy combination since the two often go hand in hand. I was able to find lots of pictures on the internet to help me come up with the style of the car as well as ideas for the look of the sunset backdrop.

I had originally planned on taking pictures through out the process of making the cake so you could see how I did it but I ended up not getting around to starting it until much later than planned and had to work fast to get it done in time. Therefore, I completely forgot to take in-progress pictures. So this will be more of a “show and tell” this week.

If you are interested in making car cakes I highly recommend the DVD, “Cakenology” from Mike McCarey. That is what I used to help me make this cake. It is one of the best cake DVDs I own and is not only incredibly detailed with instructions but also humorous and has fantastic production quality.

Here is a closer look at my VW Bug cake.

The front. The license plate says “SFRGRL” which stands for “Surfer Girl.”

The back:

The surf board on racks:

The sunset backdrop:

I was going to make a 3D palm tree out of modeling chocolate but when I realized I was running out of time I had to come up with a plan B. That’s when I thought of making a sunset. I still wanted it to be edible so I took a cake board, cut off part of the bottom to make it flat, and then covered it with yellow fondant. I then rolled out some black modeling chocolate and cut out the palm tree shapes, using pictures from the internet as patterns. I attached the trees to the sun with a little melted chocolate. I wanted it to come from behind the cake so that it appeared to be off in the distance but I also wanted to keep it separate from the cake so that I could transport the cake easily without worrying about it breaking off. In order to do this I cut two pieces of foam board into right angles and then used hot glue to attach them to the back of the cake board. My sunset was now upright.

I’m actually glad that I had to resort to plan B because I was really happy with how it turned out.

And now for the other part of my title…..

Right after I finished photographing the cake on my kitchen table, I moved it back into the refrigerator since we wouldn’t be eating it until that evening. As soon as I wasn’t looking, my ornery little wiener dog, Peanut, jumped up on a chair and onto the table, hoping to get a bite of the wonderful smell he had discovered. Here he is stuck on the table after realizing that the cake was no longer there.

I’d like to say this was a shock and that he has never done something like this before but, unfortunately, this is a common problem for us. He loves to jump up on things if he smells something good and no one is looking. I had to leave for the afternoon and I left the sunset backdrop on the table while I was gone so I pushed all the chairs far away from the table to make sure that he wouldn’t be able to get anywhere close to it.

Once again, I grossly underestimated my dog’s determination and horizontal leap. This is what I came home to:

Peanut had leaped from the chair, across the room, onto the table and eaten half of the sunset before my daughter found him. I was so thankful that I had put the rest of the cake in the refrigerator and not left it on the table as well. I was quite angry with my little doxie that evening.

I ended up placing some number 13 candles on the board, instead, and we used it as a center piece for our table during her birthday dinner.

My daughter was thrilled with her cake and told me it was her favorite one so far, even without the sunset. And not only did she like the look of it, she also loved the taste of it since it was her favorite flavor, red velvet.

Next time I will make sure and leave any edible pieces behind closed doors so Peanut has no chance of getting to them. Of course, he will then probably figure out some way to use the door knob…….

Until next time, God Bless and Sweet Dreams.