Thomas Birthday Cake
If I had a kid’s cakes category you would expect to find this cake in it.
Actually it was made for a 30th birthday celebration for a steam engine enthusiast.
When making cakes like this it is very handy to have a five year old son who is an expert and has extensive information on the subject.
I began by covering a bottom section of vanilla sponge cake in marzipan and black fondant. This was to act as a base for the rest of the cake.
It would be impossible to support a train cake on wheels alone so the black base supports the train.
I inserted supporting dowels into this base so that the train part above could sit on a cake board which would rest on the dowels and not sink into the base.
I cut the remaining vanilla sponge and created an engine shape. Once filled and covered with marzipan I placed it onto a cake board and then onto the black base.
I decided to cover the train part of the cake in sections of blue fondant as it would be very difficult to cover it in one go without the fondant tearing.
Once the train part was covered in blue fondant I added the red piping on each side of the train.
I then made some windows. I rolled out some yellow fondant and cut out two large squares and two small rectangle shapes.
I then did the same with the black fondant but made the squares and rectangles slightly smaller to create a yellow border.
Once the black windows were stuck on the yellow pieces of fondant I attached them to the sides of the train with a small amount of boiled water.
To make the coal store on the back of the train I first constructed a wall from blue fondant.
Once this had hardened slightly I added lumps of black fondant to look like lumps of coal.
The next thing to do was the wheels. I rolled out black fondant and cut large circles from it.
I then cut thin strips of blue fondant and attached them to look like wheel spokes.
My client wanted an edible photo of the birthday boy on the front of the train and sent me a pic.
It is possible to get any picture printed on a sheet of very thin icing which is such a good idea.
After making a round slab of grey fondant I stuck the edible photo to it.
I made two funnels from fondant for the top of the train.
I made a train track to sit on the board and put a birthday greeting on the board.
The last thing to go on the cake was two fondant buffers.
