Monster Truck Cake Video
Today, we're going to show you how to make a 3D monster truck cake! Keep this cake design in mind for birthday cakes for the truck lovers in your life!
We have had A LOT of requests for car cakes, truck cakes, and MONSTER truck cakes. We are so happy that we finally have a video for this!
Table of Contents
Alternative to the Platform or our Truck Cake
This video starts with Mom (BeBe) building the platform for the monster truck cake. Don't let this step scare you from making this cake design!
However, if you'd prefer not to take a trip to the hardware store, an easy alternative is to cover a block of styrofoam with black fondant (or a black plastic tablecloth) to give the illusion of space beneath the cake. I would use melted candy melts to glue the styrofoam to the cake base (or even "real" glue).
Basic Cake Notes/Details
There's nothing like actually fully viewing the video tutorial to understand all of our steps in creating the monster truck cake. However, here is a simplified look at our process!
For today's cake, we used a single 9x13 cake layer and a loaf pan (White Almond Sour Cream recipe). Make sure that the cakes have fully cooled before decorating. I you are baking in advance, you may even prefer to wrap (plastic wrap & foil) and freeze the cake layers until you are ready to assemble.
Next, split the 9x13 in half, dam & fill with buttercream and stack. (It's on it's own cake board). Then, trim down loaf cake to form the cab of the truck.
Carve away pieces of cake to form the hood.
Add scrap pieces of the loaf cake to form the bed of the truck (*optional--you could just keep it flat)
Ganache over everything using our simple spreadable ganache and an offset spatula. (This is a 2:1 ratio by weight of semi-sweet or dark chocolate to heavy cream.) Chill to firm everything up before covering with fondant.
Cover the monster truck with blue fondant. Layer on accents.
Here's a look at our fondant-covered rice cereal treat tires!
Add the cake to the platform (we "glued" it with melted chocolate).
Add the tires, and use frosting "mud" to cover anything that needs to be hidden, and to make it more realistic! ;0)
Here's our finished Monster Truck Cake! Enjoy the video!
Cake Recipes
So many cake recipes would work great with this monster truck cake, whether cake recipes from scratch or cake mix recipes.
Some of our favorites, aside from our doctored cake mix WASC Cake used in today's recipe, is our chocolate cake from scratch, orange cake, almond cake, and marble cake!
Our easy lemon cake and easy marble cake mix recipe are great options also!
More Birthday Cakes
In addition to today's Monster Truck Cake, we have many more Birthday Cake Ideas to share with you! Some of our favorites are our Cars and Trucks Cake, Shark Cake, Jungle Cake, Farm Cake, and Snake Cake!
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Monster Truck Cake
Ingredients
- 9x13 cake layer o your choosing
- Loaf cake -Ours is 8 ⅜" x 4 ⅜" use whatever you have- you can carve it down as needed.
- cake cardboard or foam core which you'll later cut to the size of the cake
- Ganache We used a 2:1 ratio of chocolate to cream--simple spreadable ganache
- Fondant- I used Duff's pre-colored blue fondant to cover the truck. Black pre-colored Satin Ice fondant for strip around base of cake. Grey fondant for bumper grill and misc accents. Yellow fondant for lights. Yellow, Orange and Red for flames.
- Rice Cereal Treats- You could make your own Rice Krispies Treats but we used premade for our tires. We used 6 of the 22 gram RKTs per tire! Then at the end of the video we used 4 more pieces to boost our tires a little higher.
- Chocolate Royal Icing & crushed chocolate and/or honey graham cookies--*Optional--this is what I used for MUD and dirt. Chocolate Buttercream would work as well!
- Frosting Sheet/Edible image printer--OPTIONAL-- I printed off the truck's name.
- FMM Multi Ribbon Cutter- Optional -- I use this for easily cutting uniform strips of fondant.
- Miscellaneous Tylose powder optional, I like to knead a little into decorative fondant pieces, Sugar Glue (aka tylose glue) or your "glue" of choice, X-acto or other sharp knife, "The Mat"-optional.
- vodka or lemon extract for painting, misc paintbrushes (optional), toothpicks, coloring gels of your choice for fondant accents
For the Wooden Platform (See our post for alternative)
- We made a sturdy wooden platform to create the space beneath the cake. An easier alternative would be to cover a styrofoam block with black fondant or a black plastic tablecloth to create the illusion of space.
- 1 18"x20" wooden board that is ½ inch thick Covered the top with a brown plastic tablecloth
- 6 6"x8" wooden board
- hand drill
- 4 6x1" screws
- Wooden dowel, ½ inch thick and cut into 4" sections. They will cut for you at home improvement store. (*later we wished these were 3 ½" to better fit the size of our tires. Ideally, the top of the tires will be slightly taller than your platform.
Instructions
- Once these cakes have completely cooled, you can begin assembling. *You may find it easier to bake, wrap, and freeze your cake layers in advance. Then, partially thaw and assemble.
- This is the simplified version of our steps. See video to fully understand our process.
- Split the 9x13 cake in half. Then, dam & fill the cake with buttercream and stack. (It's on it's own cake board)
- Next, trim down loaf cake to form the cab of the truck.
- Carve away pieces of cake to form the hood.
- Add scrap pieces of the loaf cake to form the bed of the truck (*optional--you could just keep it flat)
- Ganache over everything using our simple spreadable ganache (a 2:1 ratio of dark chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate to cream). Chill for 15 minutes in the freezer or longer in the refrigerator to firm everything up.
- Then, cover the ganached cake with blue fondant
- Layer on accents, add the monster truck cake to wooden structure, using melted chocolate as glue. Add the tires, remaining details, and frosting "mud" to hide anything that needs to be hidden!
Yay! So glad that you made it, Joyce! Your cake looks fantastic!
Here’s my truck. Thank you for all your tips......especially the board. I know fondant looks smoother but I love buttercream.
Again ty
Hi Ann, Great work on this cake, your truck looks terrific! I'm sure Victor was thrilled with this special cake! Thanks so much for posting your picture!
What was the thickness of the board?
Hi Barb, I am sorry we didn't list that detail. It is a heavy cake when completed, you should use a 1/2 inch board.
Thanks for your inspiration to do a Monster Truck cake. Your video was so helpful. Attaching a photo of the cake I did.
It looks amazing! Thanks so much for sharing!
Wow, Beautiful work, I love it! The person getting this is so lucky!!
HELP!!
There is no reference as to the quanity of fondant needed for the blue monster truck. Please get back so I can make the truck this weekend/December 18-19th December.
Hi Christine- I'm sorry about that- I would say approximately 2-2.5 lbs of the shade that you're covering the cake with and less than a pound for the accents.
I'm going to attempt this next week. We're not fans of fondant so the majority I'm going to do buttercream. Do you think modeling chocolate would work for some areas like the tires or the details ? Can't wait to see how it comes out! Thank you for the tutorial 😁
Hi Shelia- Glad that you are making this! Yes, modeling chocolate would be fine for accents. Let us know how it goes, we'd love to see a photo of the finished cake! ;0)