"Pat a Cake"- 'Truck' shaped Eggless Chocolate Cake

Last week my little 'E' turned 4 years old.In these 4 years, his mind has mostly been pre- occupied by 'Trucks,cars, bulldozers, diggers,dump trucks,monster trucks,Big mighty machines and yeah how can I forget......Trash can trucks i.e Garbage trucks!!!! All he thinks, dreams, talks about is.... these things. He told me once..'he is filling 'gas/petrol' into 'Ganapati bappa' to make him stronger!!!
Needless to say..for his b'day the cake had to be 'this' shaped!

Ingredients:
I doubled the following recipe to get 1- 9x9 inch square cake and 6 cupcakes.
1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour (sifted)
3/4th cup Granulated Sugar
1/3rd Cup Canola oil
1/4 th cup Cocoa powder
1tsp Baking soda
1/2tsp salt
1 and 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tbsp Vinegar
1 cup cold water

Icing:
1 can Pillsbury white whipped icing
Food colors-red,yellow,blue
Cocoa powder for brown icing
M and M's, other candies for decoration.
Icing gun/bag
toothpicks


Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 350F (preheating is very imp). Grease the 9x9 inch pan and muffin pan with vegetable shortening. Apply liberally in all corners.Dust with all purpose flour to coat the pan.
2)First sift flour, sugar separately.Then by a spoon add to the measuring cup to measure exact amounts.Level with a knife.DO NOT pack the flour into the cup.The ratios will change and the cake will not come out as good.
3) Mix wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls.
4) Mix them together in a single direction.Bubbles will appear as vinegar reacts with baking soda.Do not over mix.But all the lumps should be gone
5) Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 mins.Do not open the door for first 20 mins atleast.
6) Check with a tooth pick, if the cake is done.The inserted toothpick should come out clean.
7) Flip on a serving platter carefully
8) Let it cool for 1/2hr or so before icing.

9) Cut off the cup cake tops to makes them smooth and look like tires.
10) Cut a ' big rectangle' of about 6x4in from the square shaped cake.This will be the trucks main body.
11) For the trucks upper body cut relatively small..about 4x3inch rectangle/ cut 2 small rectangles to give that 'hood' shape.
12) Assembly: Place 2 cupcakes on the tray.Place a small rectangular strip of cake on the cupcakes and on the sides to give more support.

Place the big rectangle on top.The small rectangular piece on top of the big rectangle. Use the white icing to stick all these pieces together.Place the 4 cupcakes like wheels to the 4 sides.Secure with toothpicks and stick with white icing.

 13) Mix the white icing with desired colors.I used 'red' for main truck body.Yellow for the windows.Brown/chocolate icing for the tires.I used 'flower'/star' tip of the icing gun to make the patterned icing.Use m and m's/ spice drops as lights.For the treads on the tires, I used a toothpick to draw the lines and pattern. Decorate as desired.You can crush some chocolate cookies on the base pan to show 'dirt' on the road.

From back side: