The theme this past year for my sons 2nd birthday was Thomas the Train! So of course I had to make a Thomas the Train cake. The first time I used fondant was with my sons Mod Monkey cake for his 1st birthday. I decided to try using fondant again to make Thomas as a cake topper and some tracks for the him to sit on. It took awhile to color all the fondant and make the figure, but I had a lot of fun and my son loved the cake!
Of course as always I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe. I also used the vegan buttercream recipe I posted awhile back. I bought plain white fondant and colored it according to what I needed (black, gray, brown, blue, red, yellow, and blue). I was originally going to just make a double layer cake, but then decided to build some hills around the track from extra pieces of cake I cut from the 8″ rounds.
I used buttercream to put the cake together, frosted with buttercream, used “the paper towel method” to smooth the buttercream and form it around the cake to look like fondant, and decorated with fondant pieces.
I ended up making chocolate cupcakes for the rest of the guests with Pastry Pride frosting. I made a train with the cupcakes by stacking vanilla oreo cookies on the bottom with graham crackers on top to create a platform for the cupcakes. On the sides of the graham crackers, I used some of the Pastry Pride frosting to stick chocolate oreo cookies to act as train wheels. I found the idea online on several different websites. I also made train compartments from shoe boxes and attached pictures of my son to act as centerpieces and placed brownies in each compartment. I also bought some wooden trains the kids could paint and decorate to go with the Thomas theme!
~ Anjali
Tina P.
You did such an awesome job with the fondant on this cake! It’s tedious work but so worth it when you see the finished product!