Monday, April 22, 2013

Train Cake: Choo Choo!

How...freakishly...CUTE IS THIS CAKE?!?

I love it.

I bought the train pan from Hobby Lobby and completely disregarded the color scheme on the picture.  I did rosettes all over the sides of the cake and as a border on top because I have a pretty rigged up board system under this cake.

There is a 16 inch round under my 16 inch cake.  Then there is a red square board under that.

Why did I not just put the cake on the square board? It is heavy, it needed dual supports.  Why did I just not use two of the same shape board? Clearly did not have any.

In fact, a myriad of fun things happened with this cake.

First, she did not rise as much as I figured she would, and she rose unevenly.  Thanks a lot, gas oven.  I also had to crank it down to 325 3/4 of the way through because my oven was baking it just a little too dark for my liking. Usually we always bake cakes at 350 in my moms electric oven, but this guy heats a bit differently.

So when I cut the part that was above the pan lip off to level it, it pretty much did not level it at all.  My middle was level, but there was inevitably a big gap between my edges and my board all the way around.

No matter, everything can be solved with extra icing.  That is, once you get the pin back in your kitchenaid that fell out while you were making icing last night.

So that is how the rosettes happened.  They were a great way to disguise my goofy looking sides. 

This is my first ever solo cake, and I am actually really happy with it! I used two tips on the whole thing basically, a larger writing tip and a small piping tip.  Which is really backwards when you think about it, and not very handy in the long run.  But I am a firm believer in making it work.

I mounded up some icing to make the puffy clouds.  You are welcome whoever gets one of those slices.

I also quickly realized I only had one coupler. I have 5 rings, just nothing to screw them onto.  Awesome.  This resulted in me doing all things needed in the same color all at once.  I went white, red, yellow, black. Washed the coupler out in between each color, shook my head every single time.  Needless to say when I was done I went directly to the shower to wash off the residual sticky all over me from messing with so much icing.

The train cake almost broke because I had to flip it out train side up for it to cool, transfer it to a different cookie sheet train side down, and then get it on to my cake train side up.  Luckily I sprayed the heck out of the pan, and it came out just fine.  The little pans will get you more often than the big guys.

I just barely had enough oil, literally I don't even think my bottle has a tablespoon left.  I used all of my Crisco, barely had enough icing, but managed to make it through it all without a hitch.

I got it in the cake box just fine, and have press and seal wrapped all the way around it because of course, I don't have tape in this entire apartment.

The real fun begins tomorrow.  Tomorrow morning it will have to be transported to school as it is for a retirement party.  Luckily I think it is far too heavy for the boards to shift, it is just a matter of not dropping it or the cupcakes.  I have never actually witnessed someone dropping a cake, and I do NOT want my first time seeing it be me living the nightmare.

But it is super cute, I love it, and I really don't want to give it away.  But then again, I also don't want to see cake in this apartment for at least the next week.

I ate a salad for dinner because I was so tired of sugar everywhere.

Happy crafting! Pin It Now!

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