The Train Cake

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

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!!

Coal car...complete at 12:15 am!

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!! :)