Jackson recently had his third birthday. He was so excited, we had been talking about it for so so long! He didn't have a party for his second birthday because Blake was sick, so he couldn't remember having a birthday party before. There was much discussion about what cake he was going to have - each day he would have a different idea, and we finally agreed on a train cake. This soon became a Thomas cake, and a Thomas themed birthday party! Ironically I do remember telling my mother in law when Jackson was born when she bought him a small soft Thomas toy, that we wouldn't get into the whole Thomas craze....
Anyway, we are quite a Thomas household now and with two boys, I am likely to make a train cake again one day, so I thought I would keep my notes on the Thomas Train cake:
I am a big buttercream fan, rather than fondant, so I based my Thomas cake on this one that I found online:
http://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/thomas-the-tank-engine-birthday-cake/. All of the cake apart from Thomas face is buttercream, and the face is fondant. I followed the youtube tutorial for Thomas face
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6mGkcynKQBc which was easy to follow and I was really happy with. I made the face on the Thursday so it had a good few days to set. I made the cake itself on Friday afternoon. This consisted of 4 loaves - I used this recipe for the loaves, which was a white chocolate cake, yummy.
http://www.chelsea.co.nz/baking-and-recipes/1403/train-birthday-cake.aspx.
For Thomas's round engine piece, I bought a jam swiss roll and used some of that. I iced the cake on Saturday afternoon using the Wilton Buttercream recipe, and used Wilton colours Red Red, and Royal Blue. For Annie and Clarabel, Thomas tenders, I used chocolate buttercream and added some peachy colour that I had. I used licorice for the decoration details, and chocolate gingernuts for the wheels. Jackson requested that Annie and Clarabel be filled with jellybeans :)
