A special cake for a special boy!

So considering this was only my second time working with fondant, I am very pleased with how this one turned out!

This customer contacted me and had said the boy this was for was asking if he would be getting a train cake again this year. I had made a train cake for this same boy the previous year and the family was surprised he had remembered the cake and was asking for another one for his 4th birthday.

Going into this project, I had no idea what I was doing. Every train cake that I saw online was either too hard; or to be perfectly honest, just down right ugly LOL.

I started off with three 9x13 pans of vanilla cake. (I only ended up using two of those 3 pans. They were approximately 2inch high.) I froze them so they would be easier to cut and carve. I cut my initial pieces and drew my layout on the back of my cake bard to get an idea of where everything would be placed and how it would look. I went online looking at pictures of freight trains, trying to find inspiration for this cake. The first picture I saw was perfect.

From there, I trimmed the pieces of cake I had cut and started stacking and frosting the cake using swiss merengue butter cream (this recipe can easily be found online). I took approximate measurements. The engine was 5 1/2" horizontally. The cab was about 4 1/2" high. The box cars were 3x3". I used boxed regular white, royal blue and standard red Wilton fondant and Wilton brand gel food colouring to colour the white fondant. I used red fondant for the engine, royal blue fondant mixed with white fondant to get a lighter blue for the box car, and I used white fondant with yellow Wilton gel food colouring for the yellow box car.

I started the board by covering it in white fondant. (I'm sorry, I don't remember what size I purchased, but I suggest, the bigger, the better!! The train tracks were also made of fondant. I used white fondant again and added Wilton brown gel food colouring for the wood. I used a fondant modelling tool to make lines and textures on the brown fondant to make it look like wood. I did the same for the tracks but with black gel colouring to make grey. My wooden tracks were approximately 6 and 1/2 inches wide, but I suggest doing 8" to give enough room as I came up a bit short on each side of the tracks.

For the wheels, they were about 1" wide, I used a little round cookie cutter. The centre of the wheels were about 1/2". If you don't have cookie cutters that small, use either ends of your pipping tips, they work great!

The lights and windows on the engine were all fondant and I used store bought black icing to trace around all of these little details.

For the wood on the back of the engine, I used Cadbury flake chocolate.

For the rocks in the yellow box car, I used multi coloured chocolate rocks that I purchased at Bulk Barn here in Canada. In order to get the chocolate rocks to fit, I carved a hole into the top of my box car before covering it with fondant.

I cut 1/2" blocks of cake, slightly smaller than the size of my engine and box cars to place in the centre of the tracks so the train was slightly lifted off the track. This gave the illusion that the wheels were sitting onto of the track. Make sure to frost these blocks on either side with buttercream so they stick to the tracks, and so that the cake will stick to it as well. I did not measure the fondant before covering the engine and box cars. I rolled it until it looked big enough, then hovered it overtop to see if it would thoroughly cover the cars. The last thing you want is for your fondant to be too short.

I made sure to allow my engine and box cars that were covered in buttercream, to firm up in the fridge before putting the fondant on. This ensured that the fondant would be able to be smoothed and pressed down without sliding or cracking. This can take an hour or more depending on how thick the buttercream is.

I used my two fondant smoothers to smooth out the fondant starting from the top and working my way down the sides. As I approach the sides, I gently pulled the fondant away from the side of the cake, slowly bringing it back to the side of the cake while smoothing it down. I found links online to show me how to do this. If you look up how to cover a cake with fondant, you will find lots of tutorials on youtube.

For the decor on the sides of the box cars, I used more fondant. I measured my box car that was now covered in fondant and cut my decorative strips to that size. Your cake over all, will be slightly bigger than your initial measurement due to frosting, and fondant overlay.

For the CN symbol, I used left over white buttercream that I used for covering the cakes in.

This cake fed approximately 15 people.