Bob the Train Cake & Cookies

As far as train-themed kid's birthday parties go, usually it's either Thomas the Train or Chuggington since those are popular TV shows. So it was refreshing that I got to do a Bob the Train cake and cookies! Who is Bob the Train, you might ask? Well, he's an educational train cartoon with his own Youtube Channel, which teaches kids shapes and numbers, letters and many more! And it's a pretty unique theme, as far as train birthday parties go. 

Bob the Train cake & cookies*

Instead of making a big Bob the Train engine cake, I made a small Bob the train engine cake, and 5 individual train car cakes! It's much easier to portion out the cakes this way, since it was a small celebration. I baked a vanilla bean butter cake in a big sheet pan and cut it up and stacked and carved it to form Bob the train and the train cars. The cakes are filled with vanilla bean crème Mousseline and dirty iced with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. 

rich vanilla bean crème Mousseline filling

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naked Bob the train cake, carved, stacked & filled

 Each train car is on its own individual cake board so it's easier to position them on the main cake boards. I covered two smaller rectangular cake boards with green fondant, indented with an impression roller to look like grass, and then added black licorice for train tracks. To elevate the cakes so they weren't sitting flat on the board, I used a couple of Oreos stacked on top of each other under each cake!

licorice train tracks & hidden Oreos

Since I used Satin Ice blue fondant decorate Bob, I was reminded just how crappy this fondant really is, now that I've been spoiled with high quality Massa Ticino Tropic fondant! I chose to use the Satin Ice fondant because it was already a bright blue. I really should've just used the Massa. I had a terrible time covering Bob, with the fondant cracking at the corners as soon as I had draped it over the cake. Grrrr. For such a small cake to cover, it took me forever to smooth the fondant over all the edges. The front fender was particularly challenging as the fondant kept cracking and revealing the buttercream underneath!

here comes Bob. Toot, toot!

After all this trouble covering Bob, I switched to Massa Ticino to cover the red train cars, and I finished all five of those in less time than it took to cover Bob! Geez. Ok, so they were simpler rectangle shapes, but still! 

cute letter characters

Anyway, for the train wheels, I cut circles out using the back of a large piping tip and then added "spokes" cut out of fondant using a number 125 petal piping tip! 

all set to chug on over to the party

To make things more special, I did up the letters in the birthday boy's name in the same style as the letter characters in the Bob the Train cartoon, with googly-eyes and little smiles, and arranged them on the train cars to spell out a message. 

all aboard!*

To finish the cake, I decorated the cake board with little bunches of tiny red and yellow daisy flowers. I thought it was genius to put the trains on two separate 5" x 7" cake boards for easier transport! But then, I realised I wasn't genius when the cakes didn't fit in the 13" cake box...go figure!

Bob the Train cookies*

To go with the cake, i baked up some matching Bob the Train cookies, decorated with fondant. It was time-consuming to cut all of Bob's details out of all the colours of fondant, but I'm really happy with how they all turned out! I used royal icing to draw the spokes on the wheels.

time for the birthday song!*

Happy 2nd Birthday to handsome King Varian! I love his cute little outfit, complete with a little black bow-tie! 

make a wish!*

*many thanks to Varian's mummy for these pics!