As we come up to my son’s 3rd birthday and I begin creating his desired birthday cake, (although his request does seem to change daily – sometimes it’s a James cake, or a crocodile, or a dinosaur, or a frog) we have settled on a Thomas the Tank Engine cake.
So, here are some pics of my creation in progress and the finished cake. I used a wooden long board covered in foil and then glued on wooden paddle pop sticks for sleepers. Licorice for the tracks. I baked 8 small rectangle (125mm x 175mm) cakes for the train and carriages (Annie & Clarabel) and 3 small round cakes (87mm diametre), for Thomas’s barrel. I put these in the freezer so they’ll be easier to shape and stay fresh until I’m ready to ice.
I pre-made all the details out of fondant, dyed with gel food colouring more than a week in advance so they set hard.
The night before the party I started construction of the cake.
Here are the progress pics.
… and here is the finished product (after 4 hours)!
I used buttercream icing for most of the cake and decorated with the fondant details. The wheels are Oreos covered in a blue fondant circle and the chains to connect the trains are made out of choc covered licorice rings. The steam is a pipe cleaner with popcorn threaded on.
The look on my little boy Will’s face when he saw it on the morning of his birthday was so worth it!
Here’s the party table (with traffic light brownies and railway crossing wafers) and of course, Will blowing out the candles.
To finish off the theme – I painted nappy boxes with faces to make the Thomas and Friends trains and spray painted a train track on the grass for the kids to race around in the boxes. So much fun.
