Making a Thomas the Train Cake

Since I took that first month of level 1 cake classes, I've been looking for ways to keep practicing what I've learned.  So when the topic of my nephew's third birthday party came up, I decided to volunteer to make his cake.  He's enthralled with Thomas the Train right now, so of course it needed to be a Thomas cake.

I started with a Funfetti style cake because kids always like sprinkles and color.  I used my cake leveler to level it off and make it easier to frost.  I decided to go with chocolate buttercream frosting, as it is quite delicious (says the person who ate about 2 cups of leftover chocolate frosting during the holidays).  In the middle, I did a layer of my homemade wineberry jam (I canned several batches of this jam since the berries grow wild on our land, so I seem to have an almost endless supply of it).  After frosting, I did a border of shells around the bottom.  I loathe making shells - they are the toughest thing I've learned so far, so I wanted to make sure I got to practice them.  You'd think they'd be much easier than they are.

Once I had the cake frosted, I mixed up a batch of vanilla buttercream, and set about mixing the colors I would need:  blue, red, yellow, black, gray, and white.  I used a coloring book picture of Thomas the Train as my guide for the picture on my cake.  I used the stars and dots techniques on the cake.  I still need to work on remembering to rotate my stars so the frosting below doesn't show through so much.  After I finished the train (which took me quite a while!) I used my #3 tip to write on the cake.

I'm pretty pleased with the results, and now I know some of my weaker areas that need more practice.  Luckily, I have tons of leftover frosting to eat spoonful by spoonful practice my skills.  My second level of cake classes started last Thursday, and I'm excited to learn new tricks!