Train Birthday Cake

March 30, 2019

This cake was for a little boy my youngest daughter's age who was turning two. What does he love? Pirates and trains. I was recently gifted a train cake form, so I decided to put it to good use for this little boy. The party was small. Just our family and theirs.

I baked half a recipe of my vegan chocolate cake in the train baking pan. It was just barely enough. I wished I had made a bit more batter, but it worked out.

I used "goop" to grease the pan out of equal amounts of shortening, oil and flour and the cake just slid right out of the form without sticking at all. I leveled it really carefully.

I smeared a whole bunch of buttercream on the cake base and put the train on it. Then I noticed that it didn't quite fit inside the circle. I trimmed a bit off the left hand side to help it fit better.

I crumb coated it with peanut butter buttercream.

Then I split the last of my buttercream between four bowls. Some had more and some had less in them.

The smallest amount was colored blue, the next smallest was gray, the second most was red and the largest amount was colored black. However, I had a hard time getting it to black. I literally emptied a bottle of black food coloring into the buttercream. And because it kept getting thinner, I ended up needing to add some powdered sugar to the buttercream to help thicken it up.

Then I put them all in piping bags fitted with star tips. Yes, I do have that many star tips. These are all small stars, too.

Forgive me for skipping, but all I really did here was pipe on stars wherever I wanted the colors. I made the body of the train red, the window black and put a blue number 2 over it. The wheels and barrel of the train were black, the chimney blue and the highlighting details gray. Then I piped the name Paul on the cake base.

I have to say, I think it turned out really cute. It's perfect for the small child who loves trains. And the train cake pan made it really easy to make into the right shape.