Chocolate Train Birthday Cake

I made this train cake for my son Michael's 3rd birthday. 

This adorable and delicious train birthday cake will delight your child and party guests. Best of all it requires NO CAKE DECORATING SKILLS. This cake is designed for the chocolate lover. However, you can easily substitute your favorite cake mix or icing. You can even buy frozen pound cake and canned icing so you only have to assemble. 

Get boxes that will hold your finished cake and practice fitting them into the fridge. I happened to have 18 by 8 by 8 shipping boxes so I used those. You can package each of the train cars separately if you make separate cake boards for them. Plan ahead of time to find out what will work best for you. 

BAKING THE CAKES

I always bake and decorate the cake the day before the party. I do the baking in the morning, let the cakes cool for several hours, and then decorate in the late afternoon/evening. My favorite boxed chocolate cake mix is Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge. You can use any cake that you like. 

I followed the recipe for 1 box of the Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix and split it into 2, 9-inch loaf pans (that I had sprayed with Baker's Joy). I also put soaking wet bake even strips

 around the sides. (These wet strips help keep the outside of the cake cooler so the edges don't bake faster causing them to be shorter than the middle). However, since the sides of the loaf pans were slanted, the bake-even strips slid off and were not very effective. So, you don't HAVE to use them on loaf pans. I baked the cakes at 350 degrees F until the toothpick came out clean which was at least 30 minutes. 

I let the cakes cool in the pans for about 30 minutes, and then carefully placed them on a cooling rack

 for another 2 hours. If you don't have a cooling rack, just set them on a clean towel to cool. 

To make the engine, I used a straight sided 9 by 13 inch pan. This time it was very helpful to use the bake-even strips. 

To use bake even strips

, you soak them in cold water while you are preparing the cake mix. 

Then you use their special pins to pin them around your cake pan. The soaking wet strips help the edges bake slower so they rise to the same height as the middle. Therefore the cake bakes more EVENLY. I prepared one box of Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake according to the directions and baked it. When the toothpick came out clean, I let the cake cool in the pan for 30 minutes. To remove it from the pan, I put a cooling rack on top of it and gently flipped it upside down so the cake came out of the pan onto the cooling rack. I let it cool for 2 hours. 

While the cakes are baking prepare 3 batches of the chocolate ganache icing. Click here for details on how to prepare this most wonderful chocolate icing EVER. 

FILLING, ICING, AND DECORATING THE TRAIN CARS

OPTIONAL --If you want your cake to be extra delicious, you can torte it and fill it. To do this, you need a very handy and inexpensive device called a Cake Leveler

, and you slice your loaf cakes in half lengthwise. 

I always put a dollop of icing (chocolate ganach in this case) onto the cakeboard UNDERNEATH the cake to help the cake stick in place and not slide around.

Place the cake halves onto the cake board. 

Spread chocolate ganache all over the cake layers. Avoid licking your fingers so you don't add germs to your cake. 

Warm up some Smuckers Raspberry Spreadable fruit in the microwave for about 20 seconds to make it liquidy. Spread it on top of the chocolate ganache. 

Put the top layers back onto the cakes.

Finish icing the cakes in chocolate ganache. 

Now is the fun part. Start decorating! I used Fudge Stripe cookies with an M&M in the center for the wheels. Twizzlers make a colorful boarder to keep in the M&M's. The Dum Dums Lollipops made great balloon-fence for the circus animals (Stauffer's Animal Crackers). I used 2 small pieces of Twizzler to attach the cars together. 

FILLING, ICING, AND DECORATING THE ENGINE

Now, I probably could have just baked 2 more loaf cakes to make the train engine, and you are welcome to try that. However, I used a 9 by 13 inch pan. First, I cut the cake into 3 section. Two sections were 4.5 inches wide and the last section was 3 inches wide. The last, smaller section, I cut in half again (the other direction) to make the top of the engine. 

I placed one section of cake onto the cake board. I iced it with chocolate ganache and then spread raspberry on it. 

Then I placed the second layer on top.

One half of the remaining cake, I used for the top of the engine.

Next, I wanted to bevel (or round) the edges of the engine. I placed an index card on top of the cake to guide me and I trimmed the sharp corners off of the cake. 

It looked like this when I was done.

Then I finished icing the engine in chocolate ganache. 

Now for the fun part! Time to decorate! I used Fudge Stripe Cookies with M&M's inside for the wheels. Vanilla Wafers with blue M & M's for eyes. A Pirouline for the funnel. Marshmallows with tooth picks for puffs of smoke. I used mini M&M's to make a number 3 because this was my little Michael's 3rd birthday cake. I even used some rainbow AirHeads Xtremes Rainbow Berry candy for train track.

I personally think this is one of the cutest train cakes that I have ever seen. If you have any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me. Phd.annie at gmail.com. Also, my 8 year old daughter, wrote, illustrated, and published an adorable book! So, please check it out on amazon. 

--Annie Pryor