Coolest Construction Site Birthday Cake

I made this Construction Site Birthday Cake for my grandson’s 4th birthday. To come up with the design, I Googled for photos of other construction site cakes, many from this wonderful website. I chose my favorite parts of several different cakes and put them altogether on my cake.

The cake is 2 cake mixes in one large Wilton pan. I always freeze the cake while it is still slightly warm and then I frost it while it is frozen, this seals in the moisture and you serve a deliciously moist cake. The hill was baked in a small loaf pan.

I baked and froze the cakes 4 days ahead of time. The night before the party I made the frosting from Wilton’s Meringue Buttercream recipe that comes in the can of Wilton’s Meringue Powder. I separated out portions to be colored with Wilton’s gel food colorings. Then I removed the rectangular cake from the freezer; frosted the sides bright yellow and applied the green frosting for the grass. Then I removed the loaf cake from the freezer and, using a bread knife, sliced away some of the edges to created a rounded hill which I then placed on the cake. The hill-side of the cake was then frosted with chocolate frosting.

As this point, I covered the frostings well with plastic wrap and let the cake sit on the counter overnight so that the frosting would “crust” making it easy to finish the decorating the next morning.

Next morning I applied the black “caution” stripes around the edge of the cake; then the yellow border at the lower edge of the cake.

I have discovered that using bright and/or contrasting elements makes the cake much more attractive, so I decided to make a bright blue border around the top edge of the side.

Now came the fun part: adding the purchased candy rocks; the dirt made from Oreo cookie crumbs mixed with graham cracker crumbs; construction signs made with my computer; candles that spelled his name; frosting grass; a candy Lego wall; a bright yellow “4”, a load of pretzel logs, and brightly colored construction vehicles hard at work.