Monster Truck Tutorial

Here is a tutorial on how I made my Grave Digger Monster Truck.  Much of this tutorial is adapted from Jessicakes' brilliant tutorial for her monster truck cake.

 Determine the size of your truck and print templates from the internet. I used a photo of the truck and blew it up to the size I needed - in my cake, I wanted the truck to be 6" long for a 10" square cake. 

 Make your rice krispies treats as you usually do and stuff it into a loaf pan and leave to dry.

 Cut out your template and place it on the side of your loaf block and trace with edible ink marker. Flip the image over and do the same on the other side.

 Start carving. Use a serrated knife. Try to cut both sides as evenly as possible. 

 Here is the template shown on the carved truck.

 In order to adhere the tires to the truck, I opted to place some blocks under the truck that I will toothpick the wheels to - You'll see later - it is quite inconspicuous in the end. 

 For the tires - I smushed some more rice krispie treats into a cupcake tin and let them set. then I used a circular cookie cutter, the same size as my tire template, to cut the right size tires.  The yellow is modelling chocolate which I rolled into sausages and placed on the tires to mimic the treads.  In the future, I would use Jessicakes technique where she used a diamond cutter to cut even sizes treads.  Leave the rice krispies and modelling chocolate to set overnight.

 Cut some fondant discs and place on the "back" of the tires. 

 

Lay some more fondant on the front and sides of the tire and smooth it out as you would a cake. Cut the excess off.

 Using a ball tool or your fingers, work in between the modelling chocolate to reveal the treads of the tire. 

 Place some grey fondant in the center and add some detail to it as you wish so that you create a wheel rim.

 Back to the truck: add modelling chocolate to the hood and fenders to try to copy the shape of your model truck as best as possible. Mine was far from perfect but did the job ok. In the future, I won't make it as bulky because under the fondant, the modelling chocolate looked a lot bigger than I thought it did without. 

Cover the truck in buttercream (not shown)

 Lay a piece of fondant under the truck and smooth out.

 Lay a larger piece of fondant over the top and sides of the truck and smooth out as you would a cake.  Cut excess off.

 Use your fingers or a ball tool to bring out the details of the hood and fenders. 

  To adhere the tires.  Take the block you measured out (also cover it in fondant) and stick toothpicks into the top of it. 

 Stick it in the center bottom of the truck (use some vodka or water to wet the top of the block so it also glues itself to the undercarriage of the truck.
Using some toothpicks, stick them into the backs of the tires and stick that into the block.  Color the toothpicks with edible marker or cover them in fondant to hid them.

Use silver luster dust and some vodka to paint the windows and wheels.  I printed some decals of the truck images for the Grave digger from the internet onto edible frosting sheets and I adhered them with some piping gel onto the truck. You can hand paint if you wish but I wanted to capture the exact image of the grave digger truck and I'm not much of a painter. 

There you have it! The completed monster truck.  The block in the center of the truck is almost undetectable because it blends in with the dirt on the cake and the tires hide most of it.  If you really don't like the center of the block showing between the tires, then you can create two blocks that will just fit the tires in the front and back so that way there is not a black running through the whole truck. I will try this next time too.

Hope you like it and hope this helps!