Thomas the Train Cake

My nephew, Connor, turned three this summer and he is absolutely IN LOVE with Thomas the Train and all that comes with that franchise. His parents asked me to make the cake and purchased a kit from Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Train-Cake-Kit-bonus/dp/B001E4Z7VI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1287538776&sr=8-3). I was VERY thankful that I had a few cakes and classes under my belt so that I was comfortable taking this on. It was definitely harder than I thought it would be.

Connor's parents wanted a marble cake and finding a recipe that would be big enough for a sheet cake was a little harder than I thought. I finally ended up using this recipe:

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001842433&cookbook_id=5204683

I doubled the recipe to make ONE sheet cake and made that twice. There was enough cake that way. (As an aside, this same recipe also makes two 10-inch and two 6-inch round cakes. With my fancy convection oven, I can bake them all at the same time and it's fabulous!!) The filling I used on Thomas was a plain old buttercream. Yummy!

There's nothing better than seeing a cake at its' final destination. Thomas the CAKE certainly found a very loving home.

And here's my adorable nephew, the birthday boy. He was a very happy little 3 year old which made it all worth it!