Coolest Thomas the Tank Engine Cake

My son is Thomas obsessed and for his 2nd birthday I made this Thomas the Tank Engine Cake. The cake is a Nigella Lawson recipe, which uses buttermilk and takes ages to mix, but you end up with a really dense but light (if that’s possible) sponge cake that is firm enough to take a lot of icing.

I baked the cake using a 12 inch square tin and a loaf tin, and then cut them up and did some jig-saw-ing together. There was a lot of butter icing holding things together! I just used one of my son’s trains as a guide to the decoration but for the face I looked at a Thomas cake instruction site.

I iced the cake with butter icing, and then used ready-to-roll fondant icing over the top. It is possible to buy it ready-dyed but due to daughter allergies I bought white and used icing colour paste to dye it. I used icing pens for the line detail.

I was really pleased with the end result, although it was so big that we were eating it for a week, and my son doesn’t even like cake! I hope he still likes Thomas next year, I’m not sure I can top this one!


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