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!

Yo Gabba Gabba Cupcake Topper Printables

Last year we did a Yo Gabba Gabba party for my oldest son's 3rd birthday. I probably won't always have free printables to offer, except during birthday season when my husband does all my creative print bidding, haha!

 I wanted to do a short post to share his files from that party, since they were super cute :) One thing I learned during this party was to not put the toppers on the cupcakes the night before. They were all greased up by the time of the party, and we had to put new ones on at the last minute! As Jimmy Fallon's teenage girl alter ego would say, it was so Ew!

Click here for free Yo Gabba Gabba cupcake topper printables. PS... we did square so they are easier to cut out with a paper cutter! Oh the efficiency!!!

Bruce's Very Hungry Caterpillar First Birthday Party

Recently our littlest boy turned one! We did a Very Hungry Caterpillar inspired birthday for him, and it was the cutest party I have ever done! I loved this book when I was little, and I have been itching to do this party for years! My first son had a Car birthday party for his first, and I saw some invites for a VHC party AFTER... so I had to wait 3 more years to throw this cute-fest!

With some internet searching, I quickly realized how expensive official VHC party supplies were (they are no longer offered at Target, where I originally saw them). So we had to make our own, and it was super easy and fun. Luckily, I have a very computer savvy, design-y husband who will make whatever I throw at him, so he was able to scan the book and print images for the party, with whatever wording I wanted. He also made our invitations and thank you notes! I'm not really sure how people can charge for designs and printables that use images from copyrighted books... but I'm also no legal expert. Anyways, I want to offer our files so other's can easily print them for free to throw a cute party too, so that is one reason for this post! I will post pictures below of how we did our party, and then you can download the prints if you want!

For our food table, we purchased all of the things the Caterpillar ate in the book, and offered them as the snacks for our party. We stuck the labels on the food trays using the images from the book. It was adorable and I'm slightly obsessed! (I am sorry for the bad lighting, it may have had something to do with the green and red streamers covering all of the natural light)

We used grapes for the blueberries, and you can't see them, but we cut out tiny pie shaped slices from cherry poptarts for the cherry pies.

The table cloth we used was "watercolor polka dots" from Party City. It was perfect for our theme, and way cheaper than official VHC stuff because it was on super sale!! I loved it, and thought it worked really well. You can find it here.

For our signs, which I absolutely loved (even the imperfect-ness of them, because that is so like Eric Carle), I bought some Freezer Paper and set out to make them at about 1am the night before... I mean the week before, because I'm that organized and on top of things. I bought a pack of cheap sponges, and cut circles out of them, then sponge painted different colored circles on... YES! You read that right... I 1990's sponge painted the night away! Then I just taped on cut out images from the book. I also taped images onto the table cloths. It pained me to throw away the sign you see above... it was just so cute!! But that's what pictures are for, I suppose.

           

The cake table! A category 5 hurricane hit here later that day, but it does look oh so peaceful right here, doesn't it? I just went with green iced cupcakes. And yes, I am painfully aware that the sign and the streamers are not centered.... You read how late I was up sponge painting, right? We also put ice cream in a bowl at cake time, because every caterpillar needs ice cream.

The gift table. The banner is from Target, I got it for a Dolla! Also, for our party favors, we handed out butterfly nets with stickers and sixlets in them. It was a hit, and they were only a dollar at Target. We also printed "thanks for coming to my party" cards with a fat Caterpillar on them. My husband loves the fat Caterpillar. 

One last touch, the party hat! Again, we printed and taped these images to regular party hats, and it was super cute (and Big Brother Approved! BBA for short). Well That was our VHC party, and you can download all of the files we made below, for free. I am not posting our invitations, because I pretty much copied the exact same layout from someone on Etsy, and don't want to get in trouble... but the Thank You's were all my husband's idea (notice the use of the fat Caterpillar). 

For the same font used in the book, click here.

For printable decorations from the book, hat signs, food signs, and thank you cards, click here.