Thomas the Train Pinata Birthday Cake Tutorial

         

 For LilBro's second birthday this year, we went with a Thomas theme. Well actually, only the cake was themed, because we kept the party very small and went to Chuck E Cheese with only the grandparents. But the cake was themed!

This was my first year since having kids of not doing a big themed party. No matter how small we tried to keep it, it always costs so much, and I always get behind on making the decorations, snacks, cake, and spend the whole party stressed out. This year, we are truly keeping it small. It's better for our bank account, and I get to enjoy the party, too. And let's be real, a two year old doesn't even care, as long as there is cake!

The one thing I cannot let go of, or leave up to anyone else to handle, is the birthday cake! It must be delicious, and it must be themed! LilBro likes Thomas a lot right now, or more accurately, just trains in general. I think when boys are 1.5 to 2 years old, it is in their contracts to love all things trains. This was the exact same time BigBro loved Thomas, because his second birthday was the same theme!

Ok, enough chit chat! Let's build a cake! I wanted to do something more fun that would be a surprise for both of the boys, so I decided to try a Pinata cake! Fiesta!

Start by baking two or three round cakes, depending on how tall you want your pinata to be filled. I only did two 8 inch round cakes. You could do this in any shape, as long as you can slice in into layers and stack it. I used a white cake recipe that I LOVE. It's so fluffy and moist, and really is perfect. You can find it on the blog I Am Baker, HERE.

After your cakes are baked and completely cooled, slice them into two equal halves, giving you four layers of cake. One of the tops of one of the rounds will be the top of your whole cake. Set it aside and do not cut a hole in it (I did on accident, but I just stuck it back in the top and put icing on it. It was ok!).

One of the bottoms of one of the rounds will be the base of your cake. Put this bottom on your cake board, and do not cut a hole in it. Put icing around the edge of the bottom layer of cake, so your next layer will stick to it. Try not to get icing in the middle of the bottom layer, so your pinata contents don't get all moist and sticky. I put my cookie cutter in the middle and iced around it so I would know exactly where to put the icing.

The other two layers you have left will be the middle layers of the cake. Use a round cookie cutter (or a knife around a glass) to cut holes in the middle cake layers. This will be where you put the goodies!


Put the first middle layer on top of the bottom layer that has the icing around the outside edge. Fill the middle of the layer with your candy of choice. I used Mini M&M's. Next, you will do it all again for the next middle layer: Ice the outside edge, put the next layer on top, fill with candy of choice. Ice the outer edges of the top middle layer.

After the middle layers, you will put the top layer on that you set aside to close up the cake. In the picture above, you can see where I accidentally cut the hole out of the top layer! Oops! But I put that part back in and it was all fine and dandy!

Next, you want to do a thin layer of icing to seal everything up all nice and cozy. No one will ever suspect there is a special treat inside! I did what is called a "crumb layer" of icing first in white, but you can just ice it once with your main icing if you want. I had the extra white icing from the layer assembly, so I went ahead and used it, and it does keep crumbs from getting into your final icing layer on the finished product. 

 For icing, I always make my own, and I do it from memory. But the recipe is basically, two sticks of butter, softened and beaten until creamy. About 4 cups of powdered sugar (half a bag), sifted and added to the beaten butter gradually until desired consistency. I add a dash of vanilla and almond extract (about 1 tsp each). You can also add a dash of heavy whipping cream and turn the mixer up to make it very fluffy.

After the white icing dried up a bit, I took the blue icing I made and did a nice layer of it to make it all look pretty. I'm not the best at getting smooth icing, but it always tastes good!  Then I added some Kit Kat bars as the train tracks. I tinted some of the icing grayish brown (it's hard to make gray out of red, blue, and green!) and used a flat icing tip to make the tracks all the way around. 

Then I took some green icing and the icing tip with all the little pin point holes in it, and made some tufts of grass. I also used the grass for my border around the bottom of the cake. 

Notice the reinforcement Kit Kats under this side of the tracks... I knew I wanted to put a train on there, so I had to keep that side from slanting on the cake. Then I just added some more grass in that area.

I drew a 2 in the middle, and added some sprinkles.

Then last but certainly not least, I put the Birthday Thomas on the cake! It was the first thing my son saw, and he would not let it go! 

There you have it! A Thomas the Train Pinata Birthday Cake! And below you can see how a pinata cake really makes a statement when cut into! We had several people stop to look at and comment on our cake!

Mini Wedding Cakes

Also for Sarah Walker's wedding, some of us friends got together and threw a shower! Yay presents! I really did not do much, but I did make these scrumptious little fudge and carmel covered cakes. They tasted good, but I wish they had looked a little cuter. It's my own fault though, I didn't do a trial run. I like to always do a trial run on new recipes before I feed it to other people. This is why Andrew and I can never lose weight... Here are my Mini cakes!

For the tiers I used this set of circle cookie cutters. I also used these doilies to place the cakes on and the tiny lollipop sticks to hold the cake together. The doilies are kind of not my style, but they were the only thing I could find to place them on at the time. The fudge stuck together on its own.

I used a recipe from Martha Stewart online for the fudge cakes. First I prepared the pan. Just line a cookie sheet with some wax paper and spray with non stick cooking spray.

Then melt Mini Marshmallows, sugar, and other stuff that the recipe calls for, in a saucepan. Bring to a boil then add the chocolate.

Pour into the cookie sheet to let it set. I waited 4 hours at room temperature.

Once set, I flipped the pan and it came right out with the help of the wax paper. 

I used three round cookie cutters to cut my tiers out. 

Once cut I rolled the sides in coarse sugar, like Sugar In The Raw.

 I placed on a doilie and sprinkled a bit more sugar to make it fancy-like. The tiers stuck together on their own since it was a little soft still. 

All done with these!

 Now for the carmel covered yellow cakes. I like the yellow cake recipe from the book Cupcakes by Elinor Kilvans. There are many good recipes in this book.

Just wanted to add a picture of my sous chef. I would like a bigger one too... Can we say "Christmas Wish List"?

 And I also wanted to add that while I was baking, Andrew was doing this...

Without him I would never get any baking done! And there is nothing sexier than my man changing my baby's diaper without being asked... I mean come on! So great.

So back to the cake batter... Cream the sugar and eggs until fluffy and a cream color. Add sour cream, oil, and vanilla until well blended. No butter in this one... yet.

Gradually add the flour, salt, and baking powder until blended. Pour into baking sheet. I lined it with wax paper to make sure everything comes out. Bake at 350 until done. I think mine took 7ish minutes. My oven is extra hot.

Once the cake was done baking, I let it cool completely then used the two biggest circles I had to make the tiers. I put a lollipop stick in the middle to hold the tiers together. I decided not to do the top one because it was too tiny to put on a stick.

Here they are awaiting their carmel bath!

 I used these ingredients to make the carmel sauce and put wax paper under the cooling rack so the extra carmel can drip off.

Boil everything in the pot to 324 degrees F and bubbly, then...

whisk in sour cream and vanilla.

Ready to dip!

Dive in head top tier first...

the place on cooling rack over wax paper to drip excess.

So delicious. Quickly becoming my favorite recipe. I made them before in tiny cupcake form and they were amazing and bite size. Very dangerous.

Goodies at a Jewelry Party

Last month I had the privilege of baking some goodies for my dear friend Cindy Walker's Guy and Eva Jewelry party. I made many many cupcakes and tea cakes, and a few cake pops too. If you would like some let me know :)

Here is my spread! I foolishly thought that a house full of ladies would eat all of this.

I was mistaken, we had many-much leftovers.

The hit of the evening? S'More Cake pops! My own recipe...

I think these were my favorite... I love me some yellow butter cake.

Jewelry!

I think everyone enjoyed it.