Thomas the Train Cake

I was very excited to make this Thomas the Train cake for a little boy turning three. Coincidentally, my family and I visited a Thomas the Train theme park over the New Year's long weekend, where I was surrounded by Thomas and his friends! Lots of inspiration for sure.

Thomas the Train

Thomas is made out of chocolate cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache and iced with chocolate French buttercream. I didn't have to do any carving on this cake! I baked 3 sheet cakes, cut rectangles out and stacked the pieces together. To make the long cylindrical area, I cut out circles from a sheet cake using a circle cutter, and then just stacked them together with some buttercream until I had a length I was happy with!  As with the dump truck cake, I filled and dirty iced the cake and froze the whole thing in advance, covered with 3 layers of saran wrap to protect the cake. The night before decorating it with fondant, I let the cake thaw out in the fridge. 

dirty iced with chocolate French buttercream

I found Wendy Lindsey's osome tutorial online which goes into very detailed step-by-step instructions on how to make a Thomas the Train cake! I didn't really use her method, but it was a good read anyway! I started with the face first, because that part should be left to dry in advance so it doesn't droop off the front of the cake later! 

Thomas' smiley face

To make the face, I rolled out some fondant dyed grey, but not completely flat. I left the middle part in a small mound and cut out a circle, using the mound as the centre. Using a ball tool, I gently pushed it into the back of the circle to push out the fondant where the nose and cheeks should be. I filled in the holes using some fondant scraps. I pushed a wooden skewer up through the face since this will help support the weight of the face when it goes on the front of the train. I used the same ball tool to indent sockets for his eyes. His mouth, eyes and eyebrows were attached using a bit of water and then I just used my fingers to shape his face a little.

Details on the side

I used the panelling method to cover the rest of Thomas in fondant. I tried to cover him with one giant piece of blue fondant but it kept tearing on me. Anyway, the red and black details are strategically placed to help hide the seams that the panelling method inevitable creates. Thomas' face was attached on using some royal icing, to make sure it's stable & doesn't slide off. 

Top view of the cake

To finish off the cake, I added a little black steam funnel and a blue steam dome, attaching them onto Thomas with a toothpick. I used a silicone alphabet mould for the birthday boy's name and brushed some water on the back of each letter to attach them onto Thomas' bumper. Now, our "really useful engine" is complete and ready to chug on over to the party! (sorry, couldn't resist the pun)

Happy 3rd Birthday, Ryan!