Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake - please help!

[fillybuster]

Foolishly, I asked my nearly 3 yr old ds what cake he'd like me to make for his birthday....

Can anyone help with guidance/shapes/cake tins or recommendations? And how on earth do I do the icing??? [panic emoticon]

Thanks!

Btw, is it possible to make a swiss roll without a swiss roll tin?

oh I see. ...11 x 14 = 151 so roughly the same as a 7x7 and a 10 x 10 so if a madeira cake about a 14 egg recipe I think

I make swiss rolls in an old toffee tin - any large shallowish tin will do...or you could just cook a thin layer in the bottom of something deeper I suppose

arg 11x14 is 154, maybe one more egg to be on the safe side?

hope that helps?

you could always hire on of the shaped cake tins that you pipe butter cream stars all over in the appropriate colours, that is dead easy. I have done various versions of THomas in my time, the first was for DH's 18th!!

Filly
I made a thomas cake for my DS1 last year.
I have put a photo on my profile.
I made a mistake with the blue icing and it turned out dark blue instead of light blue

I made a traybake tin printed out a colouring picture of Thomas and used it as a template.

great THomas cake ...mine were made before digital!

For a 15 egg cake you'll need:

1030g SR flour

850g caster sugar

850g margarine

15 eggs

8 1/2 tbsp milk

Good luck!

Don't forget if the trial ones work they'll freeze until you need them, even once you've cut them up.

With the baked bean can, fill it almost to the top and don't forget to put a disc of greaseproof at the bottom so it comes out easily.

Good luck with it!

Thanks...am deeply freaked out by the 15 eggs and kilo of flour requirements tho (sorry Olihan, especially after you've worked it all out for me!), so am going to rever to the 10" version for now, with some extra for 2 baked bean cans.

I've decided the cake doesn't need to be mahoosive, given that there will be cupcakes, biscuits, chocolate crunchies and a large chocolate cake as well....

Will let you know how I get on...am going to start now!

Olihan, if you're still there....

Aaarghhh...am just at the weighing stage and its already beating me...

OK, for a 10" square tin AND 2 baked bean cans...any ideas of quantities?

My brain hurts

OK, based on Olihans original 8" recipe and guidelines I'm guessing:

650 flour
615 sugar (cos 630 seems too high)
615 butter (as above)
11 eggs
4.5 tbspns milk

Unless anyone shouts loudly in the next 2 mins whilst i line the tins and panic...?

How's it going? Sorry, we went out!

esae

Well , a 12 egg would be 800g flour, 685g sugar & marg and 6 1/2 tbsp milk so your calculations seem fine. The flour may be a little low but that won't make a huge difference, I think it would just make it slightly less dense.

Victoria Sponges are equal quantities of flour, sugar & marg and they're a bit too crumbly so somewhere in between should still work okay.

Hmm, sorry, I think the dcs were at the keyboard while I was calculating quantities .

Something must have gone terribly terribly wrong. The 10" came out of the over looking beautiful and a skewer came out clean but when I tried to transfer it to the wire tray the whole thing fell apart And it was still very soggy in the middle...

Back to square one...and back to the supermarket for more eggs, flour, sugar....

On the plus side, the 2 'cans' seem to have come out well, so I guess that means I 'just' have to make another 10" cake tonight....

Sigh....

The addition of 4 tbpns cocoa can't have been to blame can it? That would have just slightly increased the flour quantity, which would have been a 'good' thing...

Bugger

Running off to supermarket now before taking back dcs at 6pm....

It may be that you tried to transfer it a bit too soon. I've had that happen before when I've followed a recipe exactly. Try leaving it in the tin for a while then taking it out once it's cooled a bit more.

Right back from Waitrose with new supplies. Got to put the dcs to bed then will have another bash.

Although I am thinking about trying to use the Nigella Feast chocolate cake instead...last year I doubled the quantities (its the one with sour cream) and it made a superb 11" x 14" double layer cake (ie 2 tins)....I was thinking that I could use 2 rectangular layers for the train body and 4 squares for the back of the train...or is that very foolish? It will be a bugger to cut no matter what I use but chocolate cake might be moister...or will it just fall apart?

Decisions, decisions....

I've never made that one but my dsm who is the queen of cake making uses it whenever she's asked to do a chocolate one. If you're mainly just cutting it and piling it up it won't matter if it's a bit soft, plenty of butter icing will keep it together!

I was worried about ds having too much blue icing so I made a sponge cake and decorated it with white icing then used the rice paper pictures of Thomas and his Friends you can get in the cake packs from supermarkets to decorate it. Then topped it off with a train candle ds was over the moon and it was also alot easier than making a train shape!!!

Update on the cake situation....if anyone cares!

Round 2 of baking last night (Nigella old-fashioned choc cake, double quantities in 2 v large tins) wasn't quite enough mix for the size of the tins so produced 2 very flat but v tasty cakes.

On the plus side, they were fairly robust - so dh and I spent some time last night cutting and arranging them and they sort of worked. So then dh (at 10.30pm) suggested I ice them together there and then, and freeze them already assembled to save time on Sat night when I do the decorative stuff.

Great idea, but did mean I was in the kitchen until 11.30....but I have now got, in the freezer an enormous train shaped cake, complete with fenders and long roll on top, all held together with v tasty chocolate icing ! Now I just have to do the 'decorative' bit (arrgh...not my forte!) on Sat night....

Ooh, well done . Remember you can model bits like the face before hand, to save time on Saturday.

I did dd's cake (the Dora one on my profile) last week and was up til 1.30am finishing it. It was worth it but I was knackered!

olihan the cakes on your profile are amazing

How did it go? Have you got any pictures?

Olihan...sorry, not been online all week! I iced the cake on Sat night and despite blue icing stress (I had to make 3 batches and the colours didn't quite match....dh eventually told me to stop being such a perfectionist !) it was actually a lot of fun putting it together. In the end it only took about 2 hours to do ice - I was so grateful I'd already assembled and frozen it as it was a lot more stable (there were about 11 separate pieces held together with chocolate fondant icing) although the chocolate fondant did keep trying to melt into the coloured icing....

Anyway, there were lots of excited children shouting "Its Thomas!" when I brought it out, and ds looked completely delighted...and the other mums have grumbled that they are going to have to do something similar...so hurrah, I think it went well And it held together when I cut it, so double hurrah for that as well

Thanks so so so much for your help. I haven't worked out how to get photos off the camera yet so will have to wait for dh to help this weekend....will let you know when its up