Cake Decorating Ideas

All aboard for a terrific train party! Toy trains are such a favorite for boys and girls that all kids are going to love this train cake. Moms, you can engineer this yourself with a little with a little help from our conductor.

What your going to need are two cakes baked in a loaf pan. As you notice there are little domes on the top of each. I’m going to slice off the dome using a serrated knife. It’s really easy, sort of like cutting bread. You wouldn’t want to cut bread with a dull knife.

I noticed these are a little chilled, too. Yes, you want to chill your cakes in the freezer for about half and hour to 45 minutes. That will firm it up and you’ll have fewer crumbs.

Train Birthday Cake Decorating Video

So, one of these is going to be the engine and the other one is going to be the train cars. So I’m going to make this one into the train cars. So all you have to do is cut it in half and then in quarters. The next step is we’re going to cut off two section off the side, just to make it a little narrower. Because it’s the engine car.

Now we’re going to cut at an angle a little piece off here and a little piece off here. So now we’re going to cut a little piece out, a little section. I’m going to cut about halfway. You don’t want to cut all the way through. I’m going to cut that portion out and just lift it up. And then I’m going to place it here.

Now we’re going to start assembling and crumbing our cake. I have some colored frosting over here. We have blue and green and yellow. And we’re going to use that to crumb coat our cake.

Now what I recommend is first is put a nice dollop on top and smooth it out. Some of it will come over the side and that will help you frost the sides. For the top, what I recommend doing id try to use the full length of your spatula. And sort of go back and forth with a pretty firm touch. Almost like a wave, I angle my spatula just a little bit.

For a smaller cake like this you have an option. You can do the sides first and have a lip and just smooth it over. Or you can do the top and just smooth it down.

Now the hardest part is the corners. What I recommend is going all the way across so you get that lip again on that corner, and then you can scrape it off.

What we’re going to do after you have everything crumb coated and put it in the fridge, I just want to show you one thing. You can actually use the chocolate frosting as a glue. Because if your going to start icing this, this piece is going to move around. I just want to adhere it, just use a dollop of that.

I have one ready for you to go. This one is ready to frost. I’m going to start with the blue. I’m frosting the top first, then I’m going to do the sides. Another trick when you doing a rectangle or square cake is to put a little frosting on the corners. They tend to sag over a little bit. Again, we’re just going to get covered. It looks a little messy but we’re going to clean it up.

So now that we have it frosted I think we’ll assemble it on the tray before we put the candies on. I’m actually going to pipe a train track on first. I’m just using a pastry cone filled with the chocolate frosting that we were using before. What I’m doing is holding in place and squeezing until I have a little dot, Then pulling across and ending on another dot. And sort of tail off by swishing your pastry cone quickly. Sometimes if you get breaks, your moving too fast.

So now it’s time to put the train on the tracks. So what I have is a larger off set spatula. You can use any kind of spatula that is pretty flat and push it underneath the cake, gently lift up and put you hand under there to guide it, then place it right down on the track and slide it out.

Now it’s time to decorate it with candy. We have these little gunny rings, we can put two on each like that. And the tops are going to get a little bit of licorice. So now it needs it’s cargo. So I’m going to turn that around again and maybe we can put some little chocolate candies in this one or jelly beans. And I’m actually going to put a little coal in this one.

So now it’s time to do the smoke stack. You can use little peanut butter cups or whatever candies you like and place it right there. And maybe some lights. I’m going to use licorice again.