Coolest Thomas the Train Cake Photos and How-To Tips

Train cake submitted by:

Cheryl S.
North Royalton, OH

For my twins 2nd birthday I wanted each of them to have their own cake that they would be excited over and I wanted to make them myself. This made me very nervous worrying about getting two cakes done as well as all the other party details. My son is very into Thomas the Tank Engine so I bought the Wilton stand-up cake pan and changed their decorating examples to look like one of my sons toy Thomas trains. And Thomas's number was changed to "2" for how old my son turned. Make sure you use pound cake with the stand-up cake pan and put a thick layer of icing under the cake so it stand easier on your cake plate, the cake never fell over once! Here's my daughter's Elmo cake...

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Cake submitted by:

Dawn G.
Buffalo Grove, IL

I used a Wilton pan and then put it on a sheet cake and decorated it with balloons. My son LOVES Thomas!!!!!

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Cake submitted by:

Lynda M.
Dublin, Ireland

I'm afraid I can't claim originality for this train cake as I used the design from Debbie Browne's Character cake book. The basic cake is Maderia 12 x 8 and cut into 3 equal rectangular shapes (4 x 8 ) which are placed on top of sandwiched with butterfilling / jam. The train shape is cut appropriately. Debbie goes into great detail in her book and it takes quite a while !!! But I think the end result is worth it.

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Cake submitted by:

Rhonda M.
Tallahassee, FL

My son Larkin loves trains so when he wanted a train cake for his 3rd birthday I started with a 3D train cake mold for the actual cake. Candy faces for the passengers in the windows and the engineer and mallow mar cookies for the wheels. The train cars were made with candy molds and mini Oreos for wheels. The train cars were filled with pretzels for logs and other edibles. Everyone loved the way it turned out and since it was so long it was the table centerpiece as well...

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Cake submitted by:

Roopa K.
Waltham, MA

My three year old son is a huge Thomas fan! This really easy train cake idea came from my husband. I baked the cake (one box mix) in three different sized, round dishes: a 9" round cake pan, a 5" round dish, and a small custard dish. I stacked these asymmetrically and cut off part of the middle layer to form a slope. After frosting the entire thing in green frosting, I piped on train tracks winding up the cake (black frosting is easy to make by adding black paste coloring to chocolate frosting.) I added a "tunnel" (big black dot at the end of the tracks) at the base, and placed the smaller Thomas trains onto the tracks. I also made a blue cakeboard for water surrounding the " island of Sodor ." Very quick and easy train cake!

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Train cake submitted by:

Pen P.
Berkeley, CA

I made this Thomas the Train cake for my three year-old nephew Zach who just loves Thomas.  It was such a joy to see his face light up as soon as I brought this cake to their house.

I like to use edible decorations on my cakes as much as possible.  I made The Thomas the Tank Engine image on top of the cake out of white chocolate candy wafers tinted to match the colors of the Thomas image I Xeroxed from a Thomas book.  I enlarged this image 300x.  I put a parchment paper on top of the Xerox copy, and then traced and filled the image using the tinted melted candy wafers.  The image "slab" peels off after it has set for a few minutes.  I placed it on an angle so Zach and the other kids can easily see it from where they're seated.

The front and sides of the cake were decorated with trains on rolling hills.  The train cars were made out of fruit-by-the-foot fruit leather, the car contents with assorted candy sprinkles, the train wheels with M&Ms, the trees out of green marshmallows.  The rolling hills were made out of tinted rolled fondant.  The billowing clouds were piped meringue buttercream.

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Cake submitted by:

Eileen L.
Maysville, NC

This was the third time I have prepared this train cake. I used a mold for the top cake and a half sheet cake for the base. Every time I make this train cake I change the design a little to suit the child!

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Train cake submitted by:

Jennifer C.
Phoenix, AZ

The party theme was Thomas the tank engine. I came up with the cake idea on my own.

Once I had the idea for the theme for the party, I traced a picture of Thomas from a video cover. I then took it to a copy store and had them blow it up as large as I wanted the cake to be. I then made 4 child birthday cakes that were baked in 9x13 Pyrex pans. Once cooled, I took the cakes out of the pans and placed them on top of a board that was covered with coordinating wrapping paper. Once all 4 cakes were on, I placed the blown up drawing on top and began to cut all around the cake. Once the cake was cut to size I put the extra pieces aside for people to nibble on. I then started to cut my template little by little, frosting everything color by color, like a paint by number. I used more frosting when I had variances in the height of the cakes. The black was actually shoe string licorice.

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Cake submitted by:

Sudha P.
ACT, Australia

This train cake is a plain butter cake that I made for the base of the engine and carriages and a roll cake for the engine. I used chocolate biscuits for the wheels and animal lollipops to sit in the carriages.

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Train cake submitted by:

Lori M.
Chandler, AZ

I made this cake for my son's fourth birthday. He LOVES Thomas. To make these types of train cakes use a 3D train cake pan with chocolate cake. I then decorated it by using my son's Thomas train as a model. It was a lot of fun and my son and his friends loved it!

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Train cake submitted by:

Patricia H.
Chatham, NJ

I tried to incorporate ideas of train cakes I saw at a website I found. Thanks to everyone who made train cakes and posted them here!! I used a Thomas the Engine cake mold for the main car. Printed out a picture of Gordon's face and cut it out. Used licorice for the red stripes on the main car.

For the other cars, I used a regular mini-cake pan with small loaves. Used mini Oreos for wheels, rice krispies and licorice for the tracks (used honey to keep them down). Filled each car with candy. Here's a tip for any cake you make in a mold. Use Wilton 's Cake Release - the cake just comes out of the mold effortlessly. This beats buttering and flouring the pan.

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Train cake submitted by:

Colleen M.
Downingtown, PA

This was quite possibly the most disorganized train cake that I have ever made but it turned out great. It is Thomas the Tank Engine for my nephew Ethan's 3rd birthday.

For the engine I used the 3-D train cake pan and the rest were loaf pans cut to various sizes. The tank of the car was made in a washed out baked beans can lined with parchment paper (I got most of the ideas for the different cars from actual Thomas books and shows, except the lumber car, I just liked that and added Ethan's last name for a personal touch). The coal car (apparently Thomas doesn't actually have a coal car but all the other engines do) has crushed Oreos from those 100-calorie packs. It looks a lot like coal because it has granulated sugar on it, which sparkles in a coal-like way. For the rest of the trim on the train cake, I went down the candy aisle in the grocery store. I found licorice rounds for the wheels and long licorice for the rails, plus Swedish fish, graham cracker sticks, chocolate covered wafer cookies for the railroad ties, pretzel rods, and Oreos that I covered with blue chocolate for Thomas's wheels. To make the train cake look like the train cars were actually being held up by their wheels, I cut out foam core cubes that were a little smaller than the boards that each cake was sitting on. The train cake looked cool, but was extremely time consuming and made it difficult to transport so it might not have been worth it.

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