Thomas the Tank Engine cake - Part One - The party cake

Widget had a birthday. It was his second birthday, and like his brother Sprog at age two he is a big fan of Thomas the Tank Engine. For Sprog's second birthday I made the first of my fancy cakes, a Thomas the Tank Engine.

It took two baked cakes to assemble. I didn't want to do the same thing again, and it took a lot of prep time, although much of that time was due to it being the first time I had done a fancy cake. It was a tall cake and awkward to cut.

This time I again did a Thomas the tank engine, but with his carriages Annie and Clarabel. A total of three cakes. Given that Widget's birthday is in December, and so many people have other commitments we invited a lot of kids, not everyone could come, but including bigger brothers and sisters there were still 20 under-5's and assorted adults at the party. We needed the extra cake!

For the cakes I used packet mixes from Bin Inn. Annie and Clarabel were chocolate cakes, baked in 22cm square tin, sliced in two and stacked on top of each other to create a basic rectangular carriage shape.  For Thomas I used a Buttercake recipe and added blue colouring so Thomas was blue inside and out. I cut the blue cake in half, using one half for the base of Thomas, then cut pieces from the other half to mould his shape. Two smaller rectangles, a circle, a half circle, and an edge bit as the buffer. I stacked them together to check the shape was right. All the cakes, Thomas, Annie, and Clarabel were wrapped in baking paper and frozen, both so I could make them ahead of time, but also to make the crumb coating easier.

 The night before the party I pulled all the cakes out of the freezer, using blue buttercream, or chocolate buttercream I crumbcoated all the cakes. I did a thick layer of chocolate buttercream between the two halves each of Annie and of Clarabel. This was followed by a top coat of chocolate buttercream smoothed carefully. The roof was a rectangle of black coloured chocolate fondant. To finish I put a strip of thin flat licorice around the base of each of the carriages, and stuck on a face I had made from fondant.

The faces for Annie and Clarabel all fondant. Squares of grey, with a pointed nose pressed on. The eyes and pupils were each small balls of white cut in half then gently pressed onto the grey, then even smaller balls of black cut in half and pressed into the white.

At the same time I made a fondant face for Thomas using instructions found on YouTube. which made a big difference to the look of the cake and gave me great pointers used for making the carriage faces too.

The basic shape for Thomas was made from the cake blocks, stuck together with buttercream icing. This was smoothed over using a top layer of blue buttercream. Thomas has a red base plate. In my original cake for Sprog I covered this completely with red fondant then plonked the blue on top. This time I saved a lot of effort by simply wrapping the base plate in red fondant. The roof and windows were all cut from fondant. For the coal store I used whatever was lying around, mostly a couple of skewers and fondant shaping tools to create an impression on the black fondant to look more like coal. To finish him up I added a chimney, fondant over a bit of skewer, and the face, along with Letters of Widget's initial instead of the number 1 or 2 (Thomas' number, or Widget's birthday respectively)

The final touch was cutting train track from licorice, and linking the engine and carriages together.  The cake was a hit, and was all gone by the end of the night.

 

Sir Topham Hatt, The Fat Controller - Sewing a costume for Book Day

Preschool had book day a few weeks ago where kids dress up as a book character, theoretically their favorite book character. My boys missed it as they had chicken pox. Sprog was very disappointed and he was not the only one. A repeat day for the 15 kids who missed is happening this Friday. Sprog will be Paddington Bear, with an heirloom coat and a Mummy-made Hat. Widget's favourite books are the Thomas the Tank Engine series, so he's going to be Sir Topham Hatt, the Fat Controller.

I started the costume from scratch, making the Hat, a vest, the trousers, and tail coat. Since it's a one-off, or maybe two time costume I didn't want to spend too much on the fabric and bought everything from the clearance table for only a few dollars. For the patterns I used the Little Gentleman Pants and Vest, and modified the Little Gentleman Suit Jacket, from Peekaboo Patterns.

For the hat I modified the Reversible Bucket Hat from Oliver+S and made it from Black Felt. In hindsight I would probably try going from scratch as it may be less work than the modification. I cut the brim at the Small size, and the crown from the Large size. I used the side pieces of each to draw the top and bottom of the side pieces and added an inch or two between the lines and joined them up. I did the two layers to increase the stiffness, then stitched the two together around the brim.

The clothes started with the vest. The Fat Controller has a yellow vest with black buttons. I found a yellow and black striped satin. I cut both the lining of the jacket and most of the vest from the yellow satin. I ran out, so the inside fronts were made from some calico that I had leftover from something else. I finished with black snaps which blend into the stripes.

The trousers were meant to be grey, but I went with a pale blue pinstripe as it was the most suitable on the clearance table. The pants have an elastic back waistband, and a flat front. They are super quick.

The biggest challenge was the jacket for two reasons. It is a more complicated pattern, but it is also the biggest adaptation I have made to a pattern.

I started by tracing the correct sizes onto baking paper, but making sure to leave a length extending past the bottom of the back piece. I trimmed the top and sides of the back piece, and all of the front piece, then overlapped them by the seam allowance. Once overlapped I consulted my fat controller picture and shaped the front of the jacket and drew in the tails, stood back and checked, then cut them out. The last step was to extend the lining pieces as well, by superimposing the lining piece on the back piece and extending the tail.

 

Then it was sew, sew, sew. Even with the tails I pretty much just followed the instructions through.

The final product looked pretty cute.

Today was dress up day. The vest and pants stayed on all day. The hat was so tall it fell off pretty quick, and the jacket got too warm so it came off. He was the cutest little fat controller around. This costume will come out again in a few weeks for his Thomas Themed birthday. 

Cake Edition - Thomas the Tank Engine, Paddington's Suitcase, Minion, Xylophone, and Paw Patrols' Lookout

I used to bake a cake, splat some icing on it and call it done. Then I went back to work after having my son and I guess some Mummy guilt kicked in coupled with a bit of "If she/he can do it I can do it"

Sprog's first birthday cake was a standard banana cake with chocolate icing. Sprog's second birthday cake was for a Thomas the Tank Engine themed party, so we needed a Thomas the Tank Engine cake. I baked banana cake, mostly because I had a lot of banana's to use up. Two slabs, which I then cut and stacked to get the right shape for a Tank Engine. Earlier in the week I coloured fondant and made wheels and a face using an online tutorial to guide me.

I fondant-ed the whole cake. It was my first time using fondant; I went a little overboard. If I were to make this cake again, and Widget's interests indicate I might, I would ice with butter icing, then accent with fondant, rather than doing the whole thing. 

 

The next year for Sprogs Third birthday, Widget was 3 months old, and I went for something simpler. It was a Paddington Bear themed party, and the cake was his suitcase. I made the cake slabs ahead of time with Sprogs help then froze them.  I made the "hardware" for the suitcase a few days out to give them time to dry and kept back enough fondant in the right colour to make the name shield and the corner protectors on the day. The writing I did with a skewer and black gel icing. 

Husband got in on the act, and I made a Star Wars themed cake for his birthday. Only a simple one the first time round. The letters are in black fondant, with butter icing as a base and yellow piping. The figurines my brother bought for Husband as a present and they made a great addition. 

A single dad friend was throwing having a party for his son. He was at a loss cake-wise so I made a cake for Master 4's Minion party. This time I cheated a little and used packet mixes for the cake, with yellow and blue colouring mixed in. I stacked the two yellow on top of the two blue cakes, with butter icing as glue. I covered the lot in yellow butter Icing then wrapped on blue fondant overalls. The top of the cake had the dungaree straps and fondant goggles and eyes, and I cut a smile into the yellow butter icing and pricked a Gru logo and buttons into the front pocket of the overalls.

  

Widget's first birthday was next, and he had a relatively simple cake, by my new standards. He had been showing interest in music/noise making so a simple cake that was still more than a basic cake was a xylophone, based on his plastic toy xylophone. Each key is made of fondant, as is the head of the bommy-knocker. The fondant is kept off the icing, and therefore dry, by licorice logs, with another licorice log as the handle on the bommy-knocker.

The last cake to bring us up to date was the Paw Patrol lookout tower. Sprog was in a big Paw Patrol phase when he turned 4 and had a Paw Patrol themed party. To complete the look was a Chase pup painted on the window, still there 6 months later, and a themed cake. The Paw Patrol lookout tower looks like this.

I made 4 cakes worth of cake in the end. Two as one  big chocolate slab cake, and two circular banana cakes. I considered making the whole thing out of cake, but it would have been too unstable. 

The chocolate slab I cut a hole out of and iced green with a grey fondant road. in the hole I put an Easiyo container. I taped another Easiyo container to the bottom part of a springform cake tin. A second springform tin bottom I taped to a ramekin, and cut a hole out of one of the circular cakes to fit it in the middle. The easiyo tin sat inside the first with a circular cake with a hole in it on top, then the ramekin and cake tin assembly sat in the middle of that. I made sure it all fit together and was relatively sturdy, then took it all apart and got decorating. 

   

The  final touch was the periscope. That was a couple of straws wrapped in fondant. When they were iced everything was carefully put together again then no one was allowed to touch it, and in the case of young people, go near it until it was cake eating time. 

So cakes. They are a thing I've started doing.