Spiral Train Cake

I love the movement on this cake!  We have relatives visiting from Atlanta and the kids were invited to  celebrate a birthday this afternoon at the bowling alley.  I asked if I could do a cake for the birthday boy.

I asked for a theme and flavors.

 We came up with trains and flowers for the theme...

 ...and chocolate and vanilla for the cake:

After baking three 8" chocolate/vanilla swirl layers, the cake layers were stacked and ready for carving.  Looks like a funny spaceship, huh?  The flour canister lid helped as a guide for a curve.  The tooth picks will help guide the cutting.

The dashed lines (below) show the cake shape we're going for in this spiral cut-out design:

 Cut and remove excess cake:

For the fondant details on this cake, I rolled chocolate fondant between two sides of wax paper and then trimmed both sides straight with a pizza cutter.  Then make perpendicular cuts to create the railroad ties.  Dry brush black food coloring across the tops and sides of the railroad ties.

For the rocks, I added some black food coloring to some brown fondant and grabbed a chunk of white gumpaste.  Pinch off the desired colors and knead until the colors are swirled.  Shape to the form of a rock.  Note:  the above photo is of the larger railroad ties and the photo below shows the smaller railroad ties.

 Here's how I tackled the frosting.  I don't know if it is pretty, but it worked.  It will be covered with grass piping anyway.  The back of the cake was frosted sky blue:

I took some of the chocolate fondant dyed black to press an oval shape for the train tunnel.  I used the pizza cutter to cut the bottom of the oval straight.  Then I added the fondant/gumpaste rocks around the opening of the tunnel:

Then I started placing railroad ties.  There are two sizes of railroad ties.  About an 1.5" and 3/4".  The 1.5" ties are placed closest to the tunnel.  The shorter ties are placed around the top and the bottom edge of the cake.  I piped the edge of grass before adding the ties.

Then fill the rest of the top with piped grass.

Place rocks:

 Good top view of the tracks:

 Finish by adding decorated train cookies and flower sprinkles.  You could also use a toy train, but I kept it all edible by using some chocolate train cookies I had reserved from our Christmas baking.

After adding the second train set along the backside of the cake, I piped some white steam from the engine and some white clouds.

 This was a fun cake to make.  

 Wish I could have made it to the party.

 Happy Birthday, Vance!