Cupcake "Rhys" Car

For my sweet nephew Rhys's 10th birthday (pronounced "Reece"), I made him this racecar out of cupcakes. He is an extraordinary kid and would have been fine with just a plain extra-chocolately cake, but I thought I would try my hand at something from the "What's New, Cupcake?" book.

I modified it a bit to suit Rhys's taste-- I the cupcakes were chocolate mint with chocolate frosting instead of vanilla with red frosting like the recipe calls for.  And to make it as authentic as possible, I subjected the race car to a wreck on the way to the birthday party so it looked NOTHING like this when the poor kid blew out his candles. But like I said, he's an extraordinary young man, so it didn't faze him at all-- he just shot me one of his signature grins along with a quiet but sincere "thanks, Lala" and I melted like the #10 melted in the wreck.  

Rhys, for this and many more reasons, you are my favorite double digit nephew!