My son loves Thomas the train so I decided to make him a Thomas cake for his birthday. I wasn’t sure about the cake since this was my first cake ever so I got some ideas and came up with this. I used a 1/2 sheet cake for the body and a round cake for the face of Thomas. I started baking three days before the party and stuck the cake in the freezer to cut out the train. I used star tip #16 for the whole cake. It took about eight hours.
I went to Wall-mart and bought the edible letters. I used vanilla cake with buttercream icing. I free handed the face drawing using black icing (pure luck). It was a big hit at the party, everyone loved it and I still get complimented about it!
More Thomas Cake Ideas
Cake by Naomi W., La conner, WA
This is my Thomas cake made for my son’s two year party. I pretty much got my ideas from this website. Thank you to everyone who contributed (especially the one I used the most!) Thomas is made from the Wilton 3d pan and is pound cake I made from scratch (make sure you use a long skewer to check for doneness). I used the Wilton cake release and it was awesome. I highly recommend using pound cake for all the cars too.
Our cars were made from boxed chocolate and vanilla cakes cut to all different sizes and shapes. It looks fun and tasted good but it was messy and kinda hard to frost. (We would have had more pound cake cars except that Mutt our dog got a couple!) All I did was then frost all different colors. In fact my husband and mother got in on it and made a few of the cars too. It was a fun project for all of us.
The track is coconut and Kit Kat and licorice. I painted the honey on the board to make it all stick. The little snowman is a little marzipan snowman covered in powdered sugar. The little signs are paper wrapped around toothpicks stuck in the cake and little tootsie rolls on the board. Our son loved it! So did all of his friends!, The day before the birthday I made a practice “Percy” cake for his preschool. All turned out great and surprisingly not very hard or time consuming.
For this Thomas cake I made three round cakes on their sides with the bottom cut flat. The rest of the cakes were from sheet cakes and I used a lot of buttercream. I’m pleased with my cake.
Cake by Deborah D., Owensville, MO
This Thomas cake is a half-sheet cake with Thomas the Tank character drawn on in icing. After the initial coat of white icing sets up a bit, I like to use food colors and a small paint brush to apply clouds and highlighting for the background. The key is to use a slightly wet brush and a light touch.
Next I used the point of a rose nail to make the outline of Thomas on the cake. I went back to fill in the different color areas. Last I outlined the areas to make the image pop. The large round tip I used for the top border makes it looks like puffy smoke.
Cake by Welsh T., Springfield, NE
My son wanted a Thomas cake for his fifth birthday. He also decided he wanted his new train set to go on the cake but that wasn’t enough, he wanted it to move on the tracks. The smallest track circle that I could make using our Thomas track was 18″ across.
I purchased the biggest cake board I could find and covered it with blue plastic table covering. Using crushed graham crackers we created the base for the track to run on. I placed the track on the cake board and penciled around the inside and outside. I then put a thin layer of frosting on the cake board and covered it with the graham cracker crumbs. Then put a little frosting on a few places on the track and pressed it down into the crumbs. I baked two chocolate cake mixes and put them in an 11x15x2 cake pan. I also baked another cake mix divided into two loaf pans.
For the center of the cake I trimmed the corners of the sheet cake to make sure that the train could run around the cake without mashing into the frosting (leave room for frosting). The outside pieces (two loaf cakes) were trimmed to match the curve of the tracks also leaving room for the train and frosting. The tops of the tunnels were made of stacks of graham crackers with frosting in between to hold them. I had to make them at least 3″ tall including the cake for the train to run through.
To decorate the Thomas cake I frosted all three cakes before placing them on the board and put them in the freezer overnight. The next day I finished frosting them (I cheated and used store bought frosting, four cans). To give the cake texture like grass I ran a silicone basting brush through the frosting. Then I sprayed the top and sides of the cakes with green frosting spray leaving the center white. I used blue in the center for a pond and added blue crystal sugar for some sparkle. The trees and fences were purchased at the craft store. You can see where I did have to chisel away through the tunnels where the train got caught up a couple of times. My son couldn’t stop saying how this was his best birthday cake ever. He was so thrilled.
Cake by Casey H., Gladstone, MO
I made this Thomas cake for my nephew’s third birthday party and everyone thought it was the coolest cake ever. I made the Thomas Train using Wilton’s 3-D Choo Choo cake mold and the cars using basic loaf pans. I placed the whole thing on three 13″x19″ cake boards. The train tracks I made out of black piped icing chocolate covered wafer cookies and rice crispy cereal.
The grass is coconut shavings and green liquid food coloring. I used the peel apart Twizzlers to connect the train and cars to each other. I put large tootsie rolls under each car as axles to lift the cars off the track and then placed small Oreo cookies for the wheels. I used black jelly beans for the coal car and a variety of other candies for additional cargo. It took about four hours to ice and assemble everything and it only took about 10 minutes for everyone to eat it! (I had to leave the room when they started to cut it up.)
Cake by Jennifer K., Roseburg, OR
I made this Thomas cake for my son’s fourth birthday. He loves Thomas and wanted a Thomas cake. The idea for this cake basically came from my imagination. I used one of my son’s Thomas trains as a model to decorate. The Thomas Engine is the 3-D Wilton Cake pan. The two cargo cars (Annie/Clarabel) were made out of loaf pans so I would have the same 3-D effect as the engine. The wheels for “Annie” and “Clarabel” are eight cupcakes that were frosted. I did lay thin Popsicle sticks on top of the cupcakes before I put the loaf cakes on top of the cupcakes to give it more support.
The “tracks” for Thomas consisted of black licorice, Twix candy bar and crushed chocolate graham crackers. I crushed up the chocolate graham crackers and placed them in between the Twix bars. I put the “tracks” on the cake board first and then added the Thomas engine and the cargo cars Annie and Clarabel on top. The green “grass” is colored coconut (which I put on after I finished decorating). Thomas is connected to Annie and Clarabel by cut black licorice.
On Thomas I used black dots cut in half for his eyes on the front below his face up by the smoke and on the back side of Thomas. To make Thomas’s nose I used part of the extra cake and frosted it in the gray color and put it on with the frosting. I made the railroad crossing signs and got the materials from a local craft store. This Thomas cake was a huge hit at his party and he was so excited when I showed him the finished cake. We put the candles on the smoke stack and he loved it when we lit them and it looked like smoke coming out.
It took four cakes to make this Thomas cake. One 9 x 13 bottom, one 8 x 10, one bread loaf pan and one 5 1/2 x 6 pan. Stack each cake large to small then trim edges to make rounded parts of Thomas. Wheels are moon pies cut in half; face is my rendition on plain card stock paper. Decorate with Thomas appropriate color icing.
Cake by MaryAnn B., Sarnia Ontario, Canada
My grandson adores Thomas so I decided to make a Thomas cake for his second birthday. I made small cakes using loaf pans for the coal bins and filled with pebble candy. The engine tank on Thomas was a jelly roll sitting on a larger loaf pan and another was propped up against the jelly roll. I made tracks with black licorice and chocolate wafer cookies. Thomas’s wheels were Oreos.
Cake by Hannah E., Perth, Western Australia
I based this Thomas cake for my son’s first birthday on a design in a Debbie Brown book I found at my local library. The cake was a chocolate sponge from a recipe in the book which was good for modeling but a little dry to eat! The pieces were layered and held together with chocolate buttercream. This was my first time working with sugar paste (fondant) and I wish I had known that you can soften it by popping it into the microwave for a few seconds!
I covered the board with sugar paste and textured it with a star piping tip for grass. I also found that sugar glue was essential for holding all the parts together. I made Thomas and a matching carriage and instead of filling them with sugar paste “coal” I used M&M’s. My son loved it!
This is the Thomas cake I made for my two year old son. I spent a long time getting ideas from this site, thank you everyone. I used frozen pound cake and then cut each one into four slices for the carriages. Then I cut out a space in the top of each one and after I iced them I put M & M’s in each one. To ice them I used the tubs of icing and then different amounts of food coloring for each so they are all different colors. I iced them on top of an upside down bowl with tooth picks in each end so I could move them onto the chocolate licorice train tracks. I kept the pound cake in the freezer until I was ready to do the next four carriages, much easier to ice when it is frozen.
For the main Thomas train I used a packet cake mix. I emptied out a little tomato puree tin and lined it with wax paper and poured the mix into that. When cooked and cool I opened the tin from the other end and then pushed and pulled the cylinder shape out. My wax paper was sticking high above the tin so I could pull it. The rest of the cake mix went into a regular cake pan.
Once it was cool I put it in the freezer for a couple of hours so it was easier to work with. Then I cut a large oblong piece of cake for the base and a smaller one for the cab. I iced the cake and then put the round part on top. I cut a slice down the back of the round engine part so it would sit on the cake. I didn’t ice that part (it was chocolate cake mix) I just used red icing gel for the stripes and black gel icing for the roof and windows. I used a marshmallow for the smoke stack with a toothpick to keep the chocolate licorice ‘smoke’ in place.
I used mini Oreos for the carriage wheels and regular ones for Thomas stuck on with icing. I also placed an Oreo under each carriage and five Oreos under Thomas to support his weight. I put a couple of chocolate fingers in front of Thomas and behind him to hide the icing that was dripping down! I cut out a little picture of Thomas’s face to stick on the front of the cake.
The carriages took about three hours! There were 20 of them. Thomas took about 45 minutes to decorate. This Thomas cake was a great success and the kids loved it!
This Thomas cake is from an Australian woman’s weekly cake book. It is made from cake mix. I made one rectangular cake (used a standard baking/roast tray) and another small round cake for the head placed on top. I then cut the edges to shape.
I used butter icing colored used Wiltons paste, licorice strips for the black outlines and marshmallows for the eyes.
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