My 2 year old son loved tractors (still does). It was his first word besides mom and dad. So a tractor cake it was for his birthday! This was my first time making a 3D cake. It turned out exactly how I was hoping. I used this site for inspiration photos! I’m a firm believer that cakes can look good and taste good without icky fondant. So my cakes are made with homemade cake and butter cream icing.
I made one 13×9 and two loaf pans of chocolate cake. I cut the hump off the cooled 13×9 cake, cut in half, and stacked together for the trailer. It was placed on an aluminum foil wrapped 6pk package of chocolate bars (what I found in my kitchen that was the right size) to get it ‘off the ground’. For the tractor, I used one loaf cake for the bottom. I cut the hump off only half of it, so the ‘hood’ would have some shape to it. On the front half where the hood was going, I cut almost an inch off each side. For the cab, I cut a square out of the center of my second loaf cake, again, leaving the hump on it for shape. I used icing to glue them together, and placed it on an aluminum wrapped 2pk of pectin (again, what I found in my kitchen that was the right size) to get it ‘off the ground’.
I iced each separately before joining together, crumb coat first, then top coat. I used two bendy straws to look like a trailer hitch to join them together. I then used some icing to glue my ‘tires’ on – little chocolate donuts for the small tires, and two large donuts for the large tires. The large tires were a type of donut that had a ‘tread’ look to the edge, but they ended up being too soft and looking a little smashed. And once I iced them, you couldn’t see the ‘tread pattern’ anymore.
For his next birthday I made a backhoe, and used the donuts that are just like the small ones here, but are large size (they come in a pack of 3 chocolate, 3 plain, and 3 powdered). Then, I used some yellow dyed butter cream for the hub caps, added a plain border of green around the top and bottom of the trailer, personalized the top, added a ‘grill’ and low lights with white icing, and used peanut butter m&ms for the rest of the lights. The smoke stack was a cut off straw covered in icing.
My son LOVED his green tractor and trailer cake! (oh, and he said, “Where’s the loader?” when he first saw it.
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