Thomas the Train Cake

Toot! Toot! "They're two, they're four, they're six and eight, shunting trucks and hauling freight..." That's the Thomas the train theme song! Now, you can happily hum it in your head while reading this post :)

Thomas the Train Cake

I haven't made a 3D carved cake in a while, so I was looking forward to making this Thomas the Train cake for a little boy's 3rd birthday! This is my second time making a Thomas cake, and this time, I remembered to take pictures of the cake before covering it in fondant!

carved and filled cake!

I baked Devil's Food Cake in a large sheet pan and basically used a steak knife to cut and trim pieces to make this train shape. I used a circle cutter for the rounded middle section of the train. The piece are sandwiched together with whipped dark chocolate ganache, with a dam of vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream to prevent the filling from oozing out. 

train cake, dirty iced and ready for fondant

After crumb coating (aka "dirty icing") the cake with buttercream and letting it firm up in the fridge, it was ready for its fondant layer. Now, for this Thomas cake, I really should've saved myself the stress and just gone with the awesome Massa Ticino Tropic, high quality Swiss-made fondant that I've been using for all my two-tier cakes, but I thought, hey, Satin Ice is a well-known brand right? And the fondant is already the perfect blue for Thomas, so why go through the trouble of dyeing the Massa fondant? 

Hello there, Thomas!

Well, the answer is that Satin Ice cannot compare to Massa Ticino! As soon as I had draped the Satin Ice fondant over the cake (rolled fresh from a brand new bucket, mind you!), cracks started to form at the corners! Arrrrgh. I had to work quickly to smoothen the blue fondant all over the complicated shape of the train, taking care no to cause the fondant to crack & tear further, especially in the corners. I tried my best but there are still a few visible cracks (luckily in the back)! 

Details from the side

Thomas has a lot of details, which make him fun and interesting to look at! The panels and windows at the side are made by cutting fondant and layering them to get that outlined look. For the stripes at the top, I just rolled a really long, thin snake of red fondant and cut it to the proper width. 

boo to the teeny crack

I indented the wheels with the back of the knife to make "spokes" and then cut strips of grey fondant and let those dry before attaching them to the wheels. 

love the details on this little guy

Thomas' funnel and steam cap were also just fat and short fondant snakes. I really should have let the black strip around Thomas' face dry first before putting the funnel on top. It's funny that Thomas likes to say "flatten my funnel", cuz the weight of the funnel literally caused the black fondant around his face to flatten a teeny bit!

Thomas' funnel & steam cap

The most important thing on this cake is Thomas' face, of course! Cuz without the right features, it's just another blue and red cake. The face is made out of fondant, and made in the same way as this Thomas the Train cake. It is very important to let the face dry before attaching it on the cake or it may sag and lose shape! 

happy, smiling Thomas

To finish the cake, I decorated the cake board with green fondant, indented with a striped impression roller, stripes of black licorice for the train tracks, and a few teeny little fondant daisies. 

all set to go! toot, toot!

At the party venue, I added the birthday boy's name in standing fondant letters on top of Thomas, and a number 3 candle on the grassy area. I hope the birthday loved and his guests loved having a slice of this Thomas the Train cake! Happy 3rd Birthday, Charlie!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Charlie!