This is the cake that got me hooked on themed cakes! It was for my son's 2nd birthday. I found tons of great ideas from this website and threw a bunch of them together to come up with my own version. It was a three-day process but well worth it as you will see by the look on my son's face!I used two Pound Cake box mixes and from that made two 9x5 loaf pans and one green bean can for the engine train. His party was on a Saturday so I baked the cakes on Thursday afternoon, carved Thursday night and decorated Friday night.
I made the frosting from scratch; just a simple whipped cream frosting.
The Frosting recipe is:
-- 1 quart heavy whipping cream
-- 1/8 - 1/4 cup powered sugar
-- a dash of vanilla extract
-- 1 quart heavy whipping cream
-- 1/8 - 1/4 cup powered sugar
-- a dash of vanilla extract
Combine all the ingredients in mixing bowl and using the whisk attachment, whisk at high speed until thickened.
I then divided the frosting into thirds because I needed three different colored frostings. This is what took so long; getting the right color combinations of food coloring. I didn't have enough red coloring so I settled for orange for the caboose. It still turned out great!
I used canned white frosting in a piping bag to do the details on each car. The track is made of black licorice and chocolate wafers; the "gravel" around the tracks is praline ice cream topping. Oreos were used for the wheels with a M&M in the center of each wheel, just for a little more detail. I hollowed out the middle of the second car and filled it with Jelly Belly's as the "coal car".
You can not see the clock but it was about 11:00 pm on Friday night and as you can see, I only had the engine completed! It was a long night!!
Finally finished...time? 1:30 am...
...the big question; Will he like it? Was it worth all the effort?
Just look at that smile...totally worth it!! :)
