According to Miss Manners, what would be the appropriate thing to do when a friend is involved in a car crash on the highway? Fruit basket? Get well cards? We believe that sweets can heal almost any emotional trauma, so when my friend Noah got into a car accident, Billy and I decided to help him get over the pain of losing his beloved car by making him a Car Crash Cake.

The problems we had in designing this cake where numerous, the biggest of which being the lack of an oven. We made do with premade pound cake and some snazzy decorating techniques. If your friend just failed his biology test, try making an Evolution cake to inspire progress. If someone's dog died, you could always consider making them an Skelledog cake. This instructable may be used as a jumping off point for the solving of a wide array of emotional issues.

Step 1: Materials

We used a pound cake as our base since we felt it would be more resilient and rebound quicker after its surgery. This is our ingredient list, yours may look different:

1) Cake base
2) Icing (Four different colors)
3) Frosting
4) Mint Patties for wheels
5) Red Vines for the road barrier
6) Nerds for scattered car bits
7) Foil and Cardboard

Step 2: Cut It Up

Take the foil and wrap the cardboard with it. Do this step only if you don't have a cookie tray, if you do, use that.

Then take your delicious cake and start cutting out the general shape of the finished object. We wanted a destroyed car so we cut it in half, made some slopes for the windshield and finally cut off the bumper. Remember a general shape will work, and don't worry too much about mistakes since there will be lots of frosting later.

Step 3: Frost It Fully and Ice It Well

Now comes the part where it helps to have a bit of an artistic flair. As best as you can ice in the skin of your design with a spatula or the back of a knife. Once you have a general blank template use the icing to draw the scene you wish to represent.

We decided early on that everything in our cake should be edible, this is why we chose nerds to represent scrap bits and peppermint patties as tires. Think creatively and lots of food will turn out to resemble one thing or another.

Step 4: Finish and Serve

Take one last look at your final product, does it look edible, can the imagery you are trying to evoke shine through? If so it's ready to be deployed into stomaches. Gather as many friends as you can and take the cake to the one that needs it most: