A Cake To Remember

Happy Birthday Boys!

My boys have their birthdays with in weeks of each other, so to make life a little easier on myself and my family we gathered their birthday celebrations into one smashing day. I know this won't go over well every year, but since they're 1 and 3 they don't have much say or care.

And of course we were doing two in one, it had to be good. The whole family was invited and we did a BBQ on the deck and totally lucked out on the beautiful weather.

My three year old is really into trains, especially "Tommy" (Thomas the Tank Engine), yes we are on a nickname basis we know him that well. So I had a simple and sweet idea, to incorporate a vessel which uses locomotion, into the commotion, in the form of a train cake.

What you see was not my first idea. Note the 30+ individually decorated cake pieces, hand laid candy track surrounded by coconut grass, all laid out on a 2 X 4 foot board covering the whole dinning room table.

My mother had come home the week before with a cake pan with 9 individual train car cups, what fun! It looked like a great idea. After baking 4 pans worth of snickerdoodle cake the morning of, just to get enough for the party (not counting the practice run to make sure I could get the cake out of the pan) By the way, on a side note, for situations such as these baking spray with flour in it (yes it exists) is worth the small investment. I and many others (Thanks everyone!) were busy decorating each train car with frosting and candy as guests trickled in.

It turned out great, better than I had expected, each person and child could pick the car they wanted and it took every kid there to help blow out the candles. I can tell you this though, it most defiantly will not be repeated every year.