This Thomas and Percy Birthday Cake is a cake I made for my two boys, who were both born in October two years apart. It turned out to be quite a big cake with the two trains and the shed at the back. I started by making the faces and funnels out of fondant icing a few days before to let them dry. It is just like playing with plasticine – quite fun! I found the tips useful for the faces, although I did my own thing a bit and didn’t use quite the same technique for the sculpting.
Both faces and funnels had wooden skewers inside for support and to attach them to the cake (just be careful no one eats the skewers!). The shed was made out of one big sheet cake cut to shape. I made the cylinder shaped cakes for the train bodies using fruit cans as cake pans – I used a can opener to take off the bottom as well, and used aluminum foil as a base, that way they are easy to remove from the tin.
I used the same smaller can as a cutter for the fondant faces so they were the right size. I ran out of time to do the buttercream very well, and you can see some crumbs in the icing and the piping is not great, but the overall effect worked okay and my boys were thrilled.
A couple of things I learned from this experience – don’t make the buttercream as dark as you want it to be straight away, the colour seems to darken as it dries, so the blue ended up very dark. The other thing was to leave more time than you’d think it will take, so it is not a huge rush!
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