Mark’s birthday train mysteriously disappeared into the storm clouds on his planned January birthday party…only to reappear in the June sunny skies! The birthday train cake was the second cake I made during my cake baking weekend frenzy. It was also the theme for a scavenger hunt I planned for the kids to help my son find his missing birthday train cake.
The kids got their first clue in the mail with train tickets. As you may have guessed, I rented a trackless train for the event to take the kids a-hunting. I think they all had a great time…at least I know my son did for sure! When he saw me decorating the fire truck cake the day before, he kept insisting that he wanted a fire truck cake for his birthday party the next day. It took a lot of convincing to get him “motivated” about his train party which had been postponed 5 months ago. In the end, he liked the train cake and party so much that he wants to repeat it for his 5th birthday…and that the firetruck cake will be for his 6th birthday instead…
Now, about the cake… I kept thinking, to the point of believing, that it would be one of the easier cakes I’ve made. Silly, silly amateur cake baker… What made it difficult was the number of pieces I had to cut, again, without wasting cake real estate. I ended up using a full sheet, 3 small tomato paste cans, and two 8×8 cake pans. Remember how I said I would make the engine without using the 3D train cake pan I had bought back in January? Well, I didn’t use it and the hardest part of the train to make was the engine. All in all, I made the train engine, coal car, log car, gas tanker car, passenger car, and a caboose. I made enough cake for possibly ~75 people and then some. We pretty much burned through the cake and left the train engine and coal car untouched. The reason why I didn’t cut the train engine was because of the intricate skewering I had done to keep all the parts in place, which would have made cutting it more difficult than necessary.
As you can see, I used oreos for the wheels, chocolate covered pirolines for the logs, whoppers for the coal, an ice cream cone (tried to find a smaller one, but couldn’t due to my last minute shopping) for the smoke stack, and a sugar rock candy (thought of using popcorn or marshmallows stuck together, but ran out of time) for the smoke. I also thought of using black licorice strings to connect the train cars, but the roll I bought was too sticky and didn’t come apart correctly…so it goes… I’m just happy my son liked it!
Here is the birthday train cake:
Here is the trackless train we rented for the party:
