Vintage Car Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial

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Vintage Car
with Paul Bradford
Skill level: Intermediate
HD Lessons: 18
Decorating time: One Day
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08:52

1. Looking for a Model

The first step is to find a model of car to base your cake design on, choose the design to base your car cake on carefully and use a firm sponge cake for carving. Paul recommends using Pinterest or similar websites to find the image to base your vintage car cake on. Some of the initial cake carving is also covered in this lesson.

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11:52

2. Carving the Cake

After choosing your desired car design it’s time to carve the cake, just follow the same steps that Paul does to achieve a realistic shape for your vintage car. Don’t be scared to carve the cake as any mistakes can be covered up with the ganache stage at the end of the lesson.
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11:30

3. Icing the Cake

Using Ivory sugarpaste (your chosen colour may vary if you’re using a different car design) Paul shows us how to neatly cover the cake and add detailing to the car. It’s advisable to mark out detailed areas on the cake at this point, e.g. wheel locations and panel joins.
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07:09

4. Seats and Black Trim Part 1

The seats for the car are being created in a chestnut sugarpaste which compliments the ivory car colour perfectly. The seating cockpit of the car is lined with a black sugarpaste too which acts as a carpet and gives the cake a much more realistic look.
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11:43

5. Seats and Black Trim Part 2

The seating section is continued with the front seats of the car – make sure to keep the design nice and simple. These are strengthened using spaghetti sticks. The black lower trim of the car is also created in this lesson which needs to be measured accurately for a neat finish.
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11:27

6. Tyres Part 1

As we want the tyres to be strong and quite stiff – Paul uses black sugarpaste and CMC/Tylo Powder. Follow Paul’s instruction on mixing this to produce a stronger tyre and make sure the tyres are fully dried before attaching to the car.
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05:33

7. Tyres Part 2

The creation of the tyres continues with adding a white wall effect and a neat little trick to make the spokes…with a daisy cutter!
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8. Tyres Part 3

The finishing touches are added to the tyres with some extra detail. Remember to leave plenty of drying time once this is done.
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09:33

9. Grill and Lights

Take time to make the grill as neat as possible as this will be fully visible at the front of the cake. Paul also covers the detailing of the grill and the creation of the headlights for the car.
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07:30

10. Horn and Accessories

Paul starts by attaching the headlights to the car – he opts to use cocktail sticks in this part to cut down on excess weight. If you’re doing this, make sure to remove them before eating! The creation of the car horn, front of car motif and other details are covered in this lesson. Feel free to add more details to the car for even more realism.

NOTE: Paul slightly changes the lights and how they’re attached in lesson 13 – have a quick look now if you’re making the cake along with the lessons.

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03:23

11. Icing the Board

Paul opts for a grey, road-like board. If you decide on a different colour, the same techniques can still be applied and this would work great with grass, sand or normal road.
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16:51

12. Wheel Arch

The board is finished in the first section of this lesson followed by the attaching of the wheels and creation of the swooping wheel arch.
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07:40

13. Canopy

Just in case it rains, Paul creates a neat leather look canopy to sit at the back of the car. If you want more detail on this section of the cake, adding white lines with royal icing is an option.
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04:09

14. Windshield

Now it’s time for the windshield. Paul uses wire to create a strong structure and this is covered over with ivory sugarpaste in-keeping with the cars finish.
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04:16

15. Finishing Touches Part 1

We’re almost there! The finishing touches include some slight modifications to the lights of the car and adding paint to the front grill section.
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16. Finishing Touches Part 2

The number plate and some extra minor touches bring this fantastic cake to completion…well done!
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17. Other Ideas

Paul shares some other ideas for this very versatile cake, which can be adapted to create a variety of cars. We would love to see your take on the Vintage Car Cake – please share your photos with us on our Facebook Page!
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01:35

18. Pro Lesson

Pricing and merchandising are covered in this lesson – essential watching for the professional cake decorator.

Learn how to create Paul Bradford’s classy Vintage Car Cake, with lovely detailing on the wheels, grill, number plate and emblem to lend it a very realistic finish. This design is perfect for classic car lovers or as a novelty wedding cake and the skills learnt can easily be adapted to any type of convertible and saloon car to create a wonderful, personalised cake. The cake takes approximately one day to complete and is ideal for intermediate level cake decorators.

We would love to see your take on the Vintage Car Cake – please share your photos with us on our Facebook Page!

Paul Bradford

Paul Bradford

Paul Bradford´s mission is to ‘Empower people to achieve their cake decorating dreams’ by providing a range of cake decorating courses and online tutorials through their website, which currently teaches 195,000+ students.  
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