Mark's Birthday Cake

For Mark's birthday he decided he wanted to have friends over for cake. I figured that's sensible. :) His actual birthday was on a night that I had a choir rehearsal and with other commitments we had going on in the evenings through the rest of the week, we decided to invite our friends over on Saturday.

Now, if you don't know, Mark is a huge race car fan. He likes Formula-1, but watches Indie too. Which means I have sat through HOURS of racing. Lucky for me the "vroom" (which really sounds more like "nee-roooom") of the cars going by makes a very lulling sound to put a person to sleep for a Sunday afternoon nap. Even better, since the invention of the PVR he sometimes skips the boring parts. :)

I always pick drivers to cheer for each year. Basically my strategy is to cheer for the people who are good. So I basically claim the top 3 drivers from the first couple of races as "mine." Mark likes to cheer for underdogs and Canadians. So what this tends to mean is that my drivers win a lot and his don't. It makes racing tolerable for me.

Lucky for me, Mady has gotten "into" racing with Mark. I don't think she really understands a thing that's going on, but she likes to watch the cars go around the track. AND, they have the same effect on her as her mother, so race days usually equal good napping days! Since she has gotten into racing, Kate and I hang out together a lot in the other room. Once she's a bit bigger this will be replaced with shopping. But that's Mady's other love so her vote may swing. Poor Daddy.

Anyway, I know this is a cupcake cake - patooey! - (if you don't get that reference you are clearly missing out on one of the best blogs ever. I have linked to one of my favourite posts for your enjoyment) but when constructing a car out of cake, this is just easier. And the good folks at What's New Cupcake showed me how. :) I apologized to the parents for the amount of red icing their children ingested.

For you die-hards out there, I KNOW that Formula-1 cars wouldn't race on gravel, but the silver cake board wasn't doing much for me in terms of portraying "road." And chocolate rocks taste good. So there.