Thomas the Tank

Submitted by - Juanne Collins - Miami - USA

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

Thomas the Tank Engine - 3 years

When our son turned 3 years old, he loved Thomas-the-Tank Engine & friends.

Of course, no party box would be complete without one or two munchies. We tried to keep the sweets to a minimum and served pizza, sandwiches and chips as an alternative to a table covered in sugar! The pizzas and sandwiches were cut into train shapes using a cookie cutter. Instead of fizzy drinks we diluted apple and grape juice. The cake was made by a local Party Company. It was a plain square sponge cake with a Thomas picture on the top. To finish it off, we had a plastic train and train track around the cake. A good time was had by all, and even though I tried to keep the sugar highs to a minimum - the kids still went home buzzing with excitement.

Bernadine - CAPE TOWN