Birthday Cake Help

I made one for my son last year. The easiest thing to do is to buy a train mould (i got mine from william sonoma) use a store bought cake mix, betty crocker icing and decorate it with candy. black licorice makes great tracks!

If you can't find the train mold, you can simplify the shapes in a train and use other baking containers. A loaf pan can be a train car, muffin tins can be wheels, a square baking pan can be any shape that you can cut out. Use Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines mix - at least two boxes and tub icing with food coloring. To go even simpler just make a big sheet cake and then using candy and dyed icing make out a picture of a train. If you do this it helps to have a picture that you are working from. Sometimes I will just googled something like "cartoon train" and that will give you a fun simplified version to copy. Once you make the cake, do a layer of frosting and then use a toothpick to etch in the basic shapes. THere's something really festive about having the bright colors and lots of candy on a train. It could be a "candy car" so that the top of the car is overflowing with pretty pieces of candy. So just let your imagination run wild. Oreo cookies make good train wheels, licorice can be the tracks......you get the idea. Have fun!

Dear Mama, I have not made a cake shaped like a train but my son wanted a dinosaur cake. I ended up baking a regular cake and then used cookie cutters shaped like dinosaurs. we pressed them in lightly and the used frosting in tubes to ourline the dinosaurs. he loved it and the cake was big enough for the party. you can get cookie cutters in all shapes at places like michaels crafts and hobby lobby or bed bath and beyond. good luck
S.

I read through some if the great suggestions. One other option is to do a cupcake cake for portion control and easy distribution and clean up. I did a construction theme over cupcakes as one big cake for my son's 2nd and it was pretty fun. You could still have the train theme with each cupcake as individual train parts or use plastic toy train parts as someone suggested which doubles as party favor. Have fun and congrats on #2.

Ooh! Ooh! :) I made a train cake for my son's third birthday in September. I scoured the Web and tried various things before his party. What I ended up doing was making small loaf cakes, frosting and decorating them to look like trains (Oreo cookies for the wheels), then connecting them with those piroutte-type cookies as if each little loaf cake were a train car. One of the loaf cakes became the engine, of course. I already had a cake pan that made four separate small loaves, so that part was easy. I got the idea online -- wish I could remember where to show you the link -- but you can contact me privately if you want to see my photos. All the guests at the party thought it was really clever! The train was fun to make, too.

I think Target might also sell the train mold for baking cakes. My daughter is turning 2 in a few weeks and I am going to try to make little individual butterfly cakes with a mold that I got from Target! Good luck!

My sister made a train cake once - and if I remember right, she used a few of those small loaf pans and baked multiple small cakes. She arranged them on a foil covered cookie sheet and then decorated each one like a car for the train. (Starlight mints for wheels, etc.) I am sure you can look online for some easy ideas. It came our really cute!!

Go ahead and make the cake! I am not much of a baker either....but I enjoy making a home made creation of some sort! (I always buy REALLY good ice cream to go with my cake.......)

My husband did a train cake for my son one year. He didn't use a mold, but he just made smaller rectangles which were the cars, which were each decorated with different colors and candies. He arranged the train in a semi-circle. It was really cute!

Look at the website www.familyfun.com
It has many birthday cake options that are really creative and fairly easy to use. I made their train cake last year and it was very easy to do. The hardest part was putting the icing on.

Congrats on expecting! Williams Sonoma has a train cake pan that molds the cakes into little different cars and then you can decorate/frost them afterward. It's probably a little easier than the cakes where you buy the large shape and use the frosting bag to decorate but likely costs more.

I've had one for 2 years so I'd assume they still sell it or you could get it on eBay.

A.

A little about me: work from home office Mom with a 4 yr old charming son and a bubbly, happy 1 yr old daughter

Hi Mama M,

Congratulations on your growing family! My son loved garbage trucks as a little one so I made a garbage truck cake. 9x13 pan, traced an outline of his 8" long toy truck on paper, placed the cut-out outline on the frosted cake, outlined around it in colored frosting and, it being a garbage truck, loaded the back end with a spilling-out mess of candy (M&Ms, broken Kit Kats etc.). Leave out the garbage, outline a locomotive and you're good to go -- add as much detail as you want to do by outlining.
Enjoy!
Mama S.

Dear Mama,

Try Wiltons in Woodridge. They have a very large assortment of character/cake pans. JC Penney, Michaels and Hobby Lobby also carry Wilton's products. If you live close to Woodridge you might want to attend their annual Tent Sale which is held in late Spring/early Summer every year. Hope this helps.

I bought one of those cheap plastic Easter Bunny Trains with track. It was fairly light weight. I just took off the bunny sticker. I think I got it from Jewel or something. I made a round cake. I took large marshmallows cut in half to go around where the track goes sticky side up. The pieces where the tracks came together go onto the marshmallows. The train ran a couple of times around but not very well. It was better for looks. Some people put the train around the cake itself. I also found this website: http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/train-birthday-cake... They used mini-loaf pans. Good luck.