Scooby Doo cake..... Don't even know where to begin

[Grotbagstwin]

My ds is desperate for a Scooby Doo Mystery Machine cake, a 3D one, not flat with a pic on. I can bake but my decorating skills are.....I can just about ice a plain cake.

I looked on youtube and there is a tutorial to make one and it has scared me, it looks hard.

Also the sponge, I made some rectangle cakes to try and make the van shape as a practice (I have 6weeks to perfect this or give up and plain ice a cake and add Scooby ribbon) it was way too light and crumbled at the hint of putting a knife to it.

A cake shop quoted £75, this isn't an option. This is ds's first party that isn't just family, if it was family everyone would have a laugh at the cake that looks nothing like what it should.

Any advice....or should I just bite the bullet and buy one?

Grot if you say you've made rectangle cake before, do the same again, cut into 3 and stack one on top of each there, then you need to slope the Front and back, fill and crumb coat your cake, roll out your fondant and put over, then make the relevant designs, keep it simple, I take a photo when I see something I like, I'm working on a figure to go in a boxing ring, that took me 3 attempts, grrr.

£75 is a lot for a small cake like that, I dont charge anywhere near that, what am I doing wrong??

I've made a mystery machine cake. It was actually one of the easier one's I'd done and I am very much an amateur cake decorator. From memory, I baked two rectangular cakes, stuck them on top of each other and cut a triangle off the front of the top one to make the windscreen. I covered it in blue butter icing and piped other icing on to make doors, windscreen etc. I stuck a few sugar flowers on for the 70's effect. Chocolate biscuits for the wheels and stuck the scooby doo plastic figures round the side just in case anyone didn't recognise it.

What you want is an impression of a Mystery Machine, not a perfect You-Tube version. Your little boy is not going to go over the cake with a checklist and mark you out of 10 (or at least, if he is, you will still make him ecstatically happy). Grab a crappy image off Google images and you are golden.

Do what nannycook says, then maybe use Rolos for wheels, and a wrapped sweet of some kind for the spare wheel at the front. Buy fondant icing in light blue, light green and white (hobbycraft is good) and a few sugar flowers. Wrap the cake in blue fondant (it's very forgiving as you can just smooth out the corners, and don't worry if it looks a bit crumply, then roll out a strip of green cake and just cut freehand in a wavy pattern, stick it on with a bit of jam. Add the sugar flowers. Roll out a bit of white icing and cut out window shapes. Print a picture of Scooby and Shaggy's faces (and side profiles if you want to be v clever) and just cut out the paper faces and stick the on to the windows with a little bit more jam or sugar/water.

strip of green icing not green cake!

I've made a mystery machine. I will post a link to it in the morning when not on the silly app.

Wow thank you for all the replies! You have made me feel loads better.
Nannycook yes £75 this was the same at 3 places, they were only small aswell to feed 25!

So any links for an ideal sponge recipe that I can carve without it falling apart. I plan on making a practice one this week.

Mmm, I need one too as got a fire engine to make for the 30th and a pirate ship for the 2nd of June, between I have 5 more cakes, argh, if anyone come up with a good please share as will need one.

Mmm, I need one too as got a fire engine to make for the 30th and a pirate ship for the 2nd of June, between I have 5 more cakes, argh, if anyone come up with a good please share as will need one.

You are going to be busy then nannycook.
just looked at thread for Tinkerbell cake there is a recipe on there, can't link as on my phone.

OP, you need a Madeira cake recipe or another firm, fairly dense textured cake.

OK, here is my attempt at a mystery machine. TBH, I worked from printed out pictures of the real thing, not from a tutorial, and I would probably do it a bit differently if I did it again, but the key thing is to stack up your rectangular cakes and then get them good and cold (fridge cold) before you start to carve it.

Grot it was me that put the link on the Tinkerbell thread, can't link on my phone but google BBC easy vanilla cake, it tastes great and holds up to carving, particularly if you are freezing it in advance and thawing it gradually.

Stealth, that is really good! I have everything to make one now, bought white icing for the practice just to see if it looks remotely like a van.
Tinkerball, that is the recipe thank you.

Thanks for everyones advice

Once you have baked the sponge, freeze them overnight. They are much easier to carve into the right shape when frozen. Stack then up and use a bread knife or one that is serrated. The cake will not crumble or break and you will get really smooth sides.

One you have the shape sorted, unstick them and let them defrost before you ice them.

That is a great tip

I have to say, £75 is very reasonable when you consider the work that goes into a cake. Say the ingredients cost is £20 (including board, box, ribbon, colours, gas, electric etc) that leaves £55 to cover say 6 hours work (probably conservative for a carved cake), that's £9 an hour if you don't want to make any profit.
As someone who does this as a business, fighting the perception that it's 'just a cake' is really difficult!

I have just gotten married, my wedding cake was £300, 3 tiers in 3 different flavours and fed 200 it had a hand made and handpainted sugarpasted teacup on the top with over 50 handmade flowers on it, she drove an hour from her house to drop it off.
So to pay £75 for a cake that is 5 inches wide and feeds 25 children I find it way over the top, it was really small.

Yes, but my point would be that your wedding cake was vastly undercharged. If it fed 200, it probably should have been more like £500 to make the cakemaker a decent living. Handmade flowers take FOREVER. The problem is that most people doing cakes don't know how to price properly, undercharge (because it's 'just a cake'), find they are killing themselves doing tons of hours for very little return (or worse, find they are actually subsidising the cakes) and give up, having created a perception in their customers that that's what a suitable price is! You can't get a 3 tier M&S cake for less than about £250, do you think that £300 was a fair price for your amazing cake, or do you agree you got a bargain?

I spend a lot of time on my cakes and make less than minimum wage even though I probably charge more than you would think was acceptable. If you get a really good cakemaker, it's an artisan craft which not everyone can do to a high standard - it's a shame that people think cakemakers are trying it on or whatever when they are trying to charge a decent amount.

Oh I know I got a good deal on my cake. It was the dearest cake I got quoted though. The shop that said £75 for the Mystery Machine only quoted me £245 for my wedding cake, the only difference was I had to collect it from the shop.
Regardless of what cakes cost and time they take to make I would not pay £75 for a very small cake for a 4th birthday party......hence the reason I asked for advice on how to make one at home.

That's fair enough, I wouldn't either but it's the people who think you are trying it on or something when you give them a quote who drive me mad. ;)

Bake rectangle cake, ice green and use strap licorice to make a road outline.

Buy a mystery machine toy from amazon, preferrably with figurines, place on cake.

Voila, and boy has mystery machine to keep.

Has worked for me as a digger cake, ballerina cake, power rangers cake and helicopter cake.

Lizziemint, believe me I know how hard it must be, his second birthday was a pirate themed two tier cake....it ended up being one tier, iced red with a pirate flag on it. That was the year I thought hmm this is tougher than it looks. It was awful, last year I did a rainbow cake that I just buttercreamed and it was fab as there was no decorating except smarties, my ds has only asked for a cake and nothing else so want to try.
A big thing for me is I live in a village where everyone competes, I refuse to go down that road. Last week was a three tier Minnie Mouse cake and the mum told everyone how it cost £120.

This thread inspired me to have a go at making a Scooby Doo cake, thanks for all the tips! It turned out pretty well in the end, although it was such a lot of work! Here's what i did cakeycakey.wordpress.com