Fire engine cake ideas?

[AllyH]

My son will be 2 soon and thought he'd get a fire engine this year (he loves them), just undecided on how to do it - any tried and tested ways?

Tks

Hi

My one year old LOVES fire engines too.

YOU can hire cake tins in different shapes, so you could get a rectangular one, and then buy ready coloured ready to roll icing (or use food colouring to make your own) and get liquirce wheels for wheels, lolly sticks for a ladder etc.

Perhaps try your local library to see if they have a cake decoratiing book with ideas.

Went to the market today and they had fire engine cake tin to hire - think we'll probably go down that line, only concerned at the price of ready to roll icing, this cake stall it was £2.50 a block and I reckon you'd need 2 or 3 blocks (and I don't think it tastes that nice either - I prefer butter icing, but not sure it would work with that, it could be quite difficult to decorate?)

A normal sponge mix baked in a loaf tin is almost the right shape already - ice red (buttercream is fine) and add liquorice whirls for wheels, stick on some rice paper windows, cardboard ladder on top and the firemen out the toybox...
like this ish

low effort is the key - tbh at 2 I wouldn't bother and instead save my energy for when he's 8 and demanding an army / football / castle / cowboy / Pokemon cake...

Just been checking out the supermarket prices online and see they're alot cheaper so will go with those and buy the paste (was worried we'd end up with pink fire engine )

I know he's only going to be 2 but I like the idea of making the effort and not buying a cake, so they can look back at the photos in years to come, my dd still talks about her second birthday cake (a penguin) and she's 4 now - it's nice to hear their excitement!

Bit gutted from ds's first birthday as we lost all the photos when the computer died and we hadn't backed it all up - won't make that mistake this year!

I have done a postman pats van and a fireman sam's engine.

Both like mrs badger - 2 sqaure loaf tins.

liquorice wheels .
The ladder I made out of matchmakers (spelling) you know the mint sticks.

It is so satisfying
Ds LOVED IT.
so did dh !!!!

oh, matchmaker ladder very good idea

Oblomov did you use rolled icing? Also to make the ladder how did you do the rungs? just melt it slightly to stick together? Great idea though - any pictures?

You could cheat and buy a toy fire engine and a toy building and put on top of the cake.

There's a set of three emergency vehicles with wobbly eyes on www.cakecraftshop.co.uk. Any toy would do.

Have a look here for some ideas - was going to pick out a couple but thought it was probably easier to look yourself!!

Wow, some of them are truly awful - I hope it works out better than some of those....

watch this space!!

I made a fire engine cake for ds's 5th birthday, but it wasn't actually fire engine shaped, just a rectangular cake with a fire engine picture on the top, which I made from roll-out icing. I would post a picture of it, but don't know how to.

No Ally, I used butter icing instead of using red food coluring liquid, I got some stuff - from a little cake shop near us - it sounds like that paste that CMac described.

For the ladder, I simply used two long matchmakers, plus broke a couple up , to make the rungs and attached them to the two long ones with a tiny bit of melted chocolate. So easy.

Believe me, I am very inexperienced, but was was very proud of my final creation.

hello I had just the same problem a couple of weeks ago for my 3 year old.

what i did was just cut a shop-bought oblong cake to a big flat oblong shape on a board. I had a colouring/sticker book of Fireman Sam and used a clear picture as a model outline. then I coloured shop=bought marzipan red using red colouring paste (from Jane Asher shop - all available online - google sugar craft) and made a reasonable stab at the main shape in red, with a white background. details/outlines I used some squeezy icing tubes, which i just got from the supermarket(Supercook writing icing)in black and yellow - these were used to do the wheels, ladder etc. then - inspiration - took some of the stickers from the Fireman Sam book, stuck them on foil, and glued them on using icing. this did the nee-nah siren, Fireman Sam driving, the badge on the side, etc. etc. the stickers made it look great!

good luck.