My First Train Cake

So I do cakes occasionally and a neighbor (Hailey Slaugh) asked if I could do a train cake for her son's 3rd birthday. I looked at the picture she sent me and said "Sure!". What was I thinking?

Jeff and I started by making four 9x13 yummy cakes Wednesday evening. ("I" meaning I told him I would need about 4 and he did all the rest.) While he was doing that I went with my sister to get cake supplies.

A little side note - One of the stores that we stopped at was Wal-mart and my sister insisted we go to the Christmas area and gawk. When we went down the singing stuffed animal isle she was curious and pushed the buttons to see what they sang and how they moved. I hate that. Well, lets put it this way, I hate shopping so that already puts me in a lousy mood, so then when some kid pushes those things and makes the obnoxious noise that is interrupting my mental quiet time with out my kids it drives me crazy. She then decided to press every button on every shelf of our new singing friends. As I watched the dancing, spinning, bouncing, and bobbing of all these little creatures I put my head down in shame, and was completely red from embarrassment as my sister was rolling with laughter and tears. It was hilarious I must admit. I never doubt my sister in her ability to make me laugh.

So back to the cake...I got home and Jeff was done with most the cakes and was wrapping them and putting them in the freezer. It was very late but I was glad for the head start we got, seeing the cake was due Friday evening.

Thursday morning came and Jeff headed off to work and I took the kids to school then started on my venture. I got the frozen cakes out of the fridge and went to work.

My kitchen became a disaster area quite quickly with everything that I needed. I began carving away at the cake and found that I had much scrap left over that the kids enjoyed eating!

Here is the cake in pieces. The filling that I used was new to me so I had Annie Drake come test it for me. Thank goodness for sweet neighbors to tell you the truth about things. Luckily she said it tasted good so I continued with the project. Some cars needed more cutting and dowels than others but it seemed to be resembling a train now.

Three of the four cars are covered and I'm hoping that I can make them look good with the fondant...

Hard at work wondering how this is going to turn out!

I had been working on it all day and it was beginning to be the time that Jeff gets home from work. I called him and begged for his help. He came home and got to work kneading the hard fondant and adding the color. While he was working on that I was cleaning to make a spot to roll it out when he was done. This is suppose to be blue....I think we need to add more color!

This is the blue engine still missing it's back. No big deal, it comes later...but in the mean time I was still wondering how I was going to get the back to stay on. This one gets set to the side so we can now make red fondant and give Jeff's hand a great workout!

We used a lot of red and no matter how hard Jeff tried I kept finding red on everything...that coloring is scary to work with. I had a pink finger for days after one of my cakes...

While he's kneading the red in I worked on the back of the engine with the rest of the blue. You have to put down corn starch and powder sugar so the fondant doesn't stick to the counter but as I have found out many times that doesn't always work. Once you have enough on it so it doesn't stick it begins to dry it out so you have to get it on quickly and not make any wrinkles which create small cracks...grrrr!

Now on to the caboose...Jeff and my hands were so tired from kneading and rolling but we still had so far to go. On this occasion a little naughty word slipped out in my anger towards my fondant! I wanted to roll it up in a neat little ball and chuck it through the window...!

Finally exhaustion fell upon me and Jeff and I went to bed with the cake in this condition. But it looks promising and I only hoped it would get better in the morning as I would be refreshed and energized. Jeff was very sweet and cleaned up the kitchen so I could see the counters again while I was getting ready for bed.

Another morning came and before I knew it I had made the kitchen a disaster again.

I called my sister and got her out of bed to come and help me keep going. She came down with her four kids who, with Ayla, helped make a disaster area out of the rest of the house so now it all matched. (There are perks to everything!.....) Her help was awesome to have. She kneaded more fondant as I was rolling and covering the two cars that were left. She found a shelf in the garage that I could use to put the cake on, then covered it in parchment paper. By about noon the train was all covered in fondant and on the parchment paper ready for decoration.

We moved it back onto the table so I could work on it and keep it away from the kids. There was constant "Get away from the table! Don't touch the cake!.....etc." My nerves were gone and my sis did a great job of taking care of the kids. She even fed them all lunch on the living room stairs and went to pick up the twins from school when I forgot....

My sis also did a great job of telling me what lines weren't straight and laughing when I screwed up and had to fix it. Oh the sisterly love!!

After only 25 hours of work on the cake it comes to an end. Dang.... Before Jeff got home from work I had the kitchen all cleaned up again like nothing had ever happened and a cute little cake sitting on the table that was ready for delivery.

I took it to Hailey's house at about 6:00 pm. She said she loved it which was a huge relief! Now I just hope it tasted good too! We then headed to the ward party where they were doing a service auction. People who know I do cakes mentioned I should donate one......let's just say...maybe next year!...

Happy Birthday Hudson!!