Fire Truck Cake

Well, here goes.

Jack Jack or 'Baby Jack' turned 2 on Sunday. Alexa's really been into watching YouTube videos recently about cake decorating. I guess she's working on her new career. So the girls decided we had to make the Fire Truck cake from Howdini. We saw some tutorials about Car cakes but they looked impossible to make with the supplies we had. Howdini is from Betty Crocker and uses simple kitchen items and easy ingredients, most importantly boxed cake and tubs of frosting.

Fire Truck Birthday Cake

We started out coloring our frosting. Each girl got a white tub and added drops of red gel dye until it was the right color, which meant we used the whole tube since it never got to the color we wanted. The tutorial specifically said to use the gel dye and I do think it worked better and didn't stain anything like the other drop bottles do.

Jack wanted to help. It was his birthday after all. I gave him some green to mix up since we didn't need green for the truck.

While I got the girls involved in decorating their own cakes with the scraps, I started building the truck. I made 3 loaf pan size cakes with one box of yellow cake. (Betty Crocker of course.)

I leveled off the tops which provided the extra parts for the girls to build with, and then constructed them into this shape:

I just lined a cookie sheet with foil for the base. Use frosting to stick all the parts together and to the base.

Next is the crumb coat. Using your final color, put frosting over the whole cake and put in the fridge for an hour. This gave me time to run out to the store and get all the candies we needed. And Oreos.

Here's the Crumb Coat. A week ago, when we were discussing which cake to try for the party, I mentioned how we had to plan ahead and leave time for the first coat of frosting to dry. Alexa said, "Mom, it's called the Crumb Coat."

 Next was the second coat of frosting and the decorating.

Alexa's surreptitiously holding the DOTS hoping that the recipe calls for her to eat one in advance.

• Gray frosting for accent.
• Oreo cookies for wheels.
• DOTS for sirens and lights.
• Twizzlers for ladder and hoses.

 Finished project! It was a big hit! We're going to try the Butterfly cake tomorrow.

First Attempt at Blogging

Made an awesome cake today and had fun with the kids. Baby Jack turned two. Except for the fleas, it was a good day. Well, and driving in a pickup with 3 adults in the front seat. That wasn't so safe. But it was fun. If I have time tomorrow, I'll post the tutorial about the fire truck cake. I'm already thinking of what supplies I need to make it easier and how I'll improve on it next time. Yikes, I may have to start being creative again.