I remember as a young child, my mum made my brother a cool train cake for his birthday. I think it came from one of the Women’s Weekly cake books. There was a lot of that coloured, sweet popcorn involved in that cake!

Anyway, I used what I remembered about that old cake, and made my own version of a train cake for the boys.

I started with four loaf tin cakes (three cake mixes divided among four pans). I used the first to create the train’s engine, and the other two were divided into three carriages. For the engine, I cut off the top of the cake and shaped one end to a point, where the train’s grill would go. I cut up the top of the cake, and some of the second cake to create the engine’s cabin and barrel. These pieces were stacked up and attached using some butter cream.

I tried to make the carriages roughly equal in size, though the last one ended up slightly longer. I scooped a shallow hole in the top of each one, where we could place the ‘cargo’ once they were iced.

On the foil covered cake board, L helped me prepare the train tracks. We iced a section with green buttercream to represent the grass, and then carefully cut up a roll of licorice to make the tracks. I used one of the cakes to guide the width of the tracks.

Each of the kids picked a colour for part of the train, and they each had a go at decorating it. I covered the cake in buttercream, and placed them on the tracks. L joined each carriage to the engine and each other using pieces of licorice. She also added mint slice biscuits to the carriages as wheels while A added two mint slice biscuits for the engine’s front wheels, and two wagon wheel biscuits for the back wheels (these are a bit bigger than mint slice).

The first carriage got a load of jersey caramel lollies, the second had jellybeans, and the third carriage was filled with marshmallows. L used little pieces of marshmallows threaded onto a pipe cleaner (chenille stick) to mimic smoke emerging from the engine’s stack. I used licorice to make the engine’s grill, and we all helped to place jellybeans and choc chips to decorate the engine. The windows are flattened marshmallows. The boys helped by eating the excess lollies!

We had lots of fun making this cake, and we shared it with our neighbours and their kids, which made it even more fun!