I’ve gotten some pretty specific cake requests in the past, but this one was the cutest!  This little 3 year old birthday boy loves trains.  He gets a train cake for his birthday each year, but this year he needed a very specific train.  He is obsessed with the Acela Express Train.  He goes to the train yard and watches this specific train so the cake had to be right.   His mom wanted the cake to look authentic, not too cartoon like.

I was nervous about making this cake because the train is so simple and clean, I really couldn’t make any mistakes!  I baked a rectangle cake for the base and covered it in green fondant.  This gives the cake a larger look and adding servings to the cake without having to make the train unbelievably large.  The train itself was about 4″ wide and 10″ long.  I stacked the train out of a few sheet cakes and carved it down to the proper shape.  I covered the train in gray fondant and then airbrushed it with silver color to make it look shiny and metallic.  Then I added all the other details.

I cut the Acela logo out of thin blue fondant and a paper template I printed.  The little fondant trees were really fun to make.  I shaped some green fondant into a cone shape and then used a tiny scissor to snip into the fondant in an uneven pattern.  These never actually dried out so I was able to insert a paper lollipop stick inside to help them stay in place on the cake.

I made gravel to surround the train out of different shades of gray fondant.  I just cut the fondant into tiny pebbles and let them dry.  Then I glued them to the cake with royal icing.  You really can’t tell that there are 3 or 4 colors of gray here but it makes all the difference. If I had used all the same color, it would have looked a bit flat.  The railroad signs were made out of fondant and attached to lollipop sticks.  The sticks start out white so I just colored them black using an edible food coloring pen.  The last detail the cake needed was the mountains for a backdrop.  I cut mountains out of fondant or gum paste and let them dry.  Then I attached them to lollipop sticks and placed them behind the train to really set the scene.  Happy 3rd birthday!

This is what happens when you ask for a girly, princess, one year old birthday cake.  I go over the top!  I decided to try out two new techniques on one cake, the pleating and the gold sequins.

These fondant pleats were not so hard to do, they just took a lot of time and a lot of fondant!  This cake was so heavy because all the fondant is doubled over.  With all that fondant, I’m glad the cake looks light and elegant.

The gold sequins gave me a few mini heart attacks.  I had this idea and it needed to  happen!  Here is how I made the fondant sequins.

I mixed white fondant with some tylose powder so it would dry quicker and harder.  Then I mixed in yellow gel color.  I used Americolor lemon yellow and egg yellow.  The fondant needs to be a yellow base because then you need less gold airbrush color.  If you start with white and then airbrush gold color it will take a lot of layers of airbrush color and you may never even achieve the color you are going for.  I rolled out the fondant really thinly (I used my pasta machine attachment, but you could do this without one).  Then I used a small straight round piping tip to cut out lots of tiny circles.  I used a tiny ball tool to pop the sequins out of the tip.

I cut lots and lots and lots of sequins.  Then I spread them on a parchment lined baking sheet to dry and harden.  The last picture with all the sequins looks a bit lighter in color because it actually is a lighter shade of yellow!  I cut out two different colors of yellow fondant thinking it might give a little more dimension to the finished cake but in the end, it didn’t matter.  Once the sequins dried for a few days, I attached them to a fondant covered cake tier.  I used sugar glue (tylose powder dissolved in water).  I brushed the sugar glue all over the cake and then pressed the sequins on to the cake.  I did this process a few times to get the coverage I needed.  Here is where the heart attacks came in.  I was nervous that the sequins were not going to stay glue on to the cake especially when I tried to add a second layer of sequins.  Then I feared I would run out of sequins!  I ended up with enough, but not by much…always make more sequins then you think you need!  Once the sequins were all attached, I let it dry for a while before airbrushing it with gold airbrush color.  I allowed that to dry before assembling the cake.

The tiara was the easiest part of the cake for me this time since I’ve made it before.  This time it gave me a little trouble; the weather was so incredibly humid that the tiara was not drying out!  I broke it a bit when I was attaching it to the cake, but I was able to repair it (phew).  This cake came out so so pretty and I can’t wait to use my new techniques again!