Toyland Train Cake

I made this cake for my friend. It was easier to do than it looks.
I used three normal size vanilla sponge loaves, one swiss roll and three mini vanilla loaves.
For the engine, I leveled the top of one sponge cake baked in a loaf tin. I attached the swiss roll to the flattened loaf, shortening it slightly to make room for the "engine room" at the back . I made the engine room by placing two mini sponge loaves on top of each other. I used bamboo skewers to secure each cake to the other prior to icing. The third mini loaf was placed on its side in front of the engine to create the bull bar.
The two carriages were the other two loaf shaped cakes. I leveled them and scooped out a hollow in the top center of each. Once these were iced, I filled the hollows with sweets (smarties and jelly tots).
The wheels were round chocolate dipped biscuits with an Astro iced in the center of each one. I joined each carriage onto the train with a licorice strand and used licorice, silver balls and wafer biscuits to decorate the engine. The finishing touches were the chocolate "R" on the engine and the back of the last carriage, the twisted lolly pop engine stack, and the candy floss smoke (I recommend that you leave the candy floss for the last minute as it starts to dissolve when exposed to humidity).
The cake tray was wrapped in tin foil. I iced a chocolate track onto it, and filled in the track with brown sugar. I added a couple of drops of green food colouring to shredded coconut and used this for the grass on either side of the tracks.

Jessica - DURBANVILLE