Bulldozer

This was pretty fun and I have to say pretty easy overall.

What you will need:

• Kit-Kat bars
• 2 Hershey chocolate bars
• Melting chocolate
• Crushed up graham cracker or crushed cookie
• Yellow and chocolate frosting
• Decorations and embellishments (optional)

This was another cake that I was not too sure where to start.  I found a cute picture of a cake on line and decided to use it as inspiration and make it my own.  I started with two cakes, chocolate and vanilla so the kids had something to choose from.

Want to give it a shot…?

Bake one of the cakes according to the recipe directions in a 9×13 pan.  This cake will be used for the body of the truck.  Once cooked and cooled measure the cake and cut sections to stack, frost in between and carve.  Since the top of a cake rises I used the slope of the rise for the hood of the truck and created height under it by putting it on top of another layer.  You will probably need to play with the height of the layers to accommodate the proportion of your truck.  Fully construct the body of the truck and frost it all over.

I baked the second cake in two loaf pans.  I actually only used one for the two wheels/tracks but depending on the shape and height of your truck you may find a use for it on the body of the truck.  For the wheels/tracks I sliced one of the cakes in half vertically and lengthwise through the cake.  Once cut I carved the tracks a bit to make them lower in the front and hopefully make them look more realistic.

I took a piece of the cut cake and laid it on its side.  I spread a layer, not too thick, of chocolate frosting on what will be the bottom of the track.  After trimming the length of the Kit-Kats so they were just about the same length as the width of the cake I carefully laid the candy bars, pressing them into the frosting to form the track.   Be careful to lay the candy so the cut side of the bar is pointing to the cut side of the cake.  This way when you attach the track it has a clean edge.

I would recommend smearing a bit of chocolate frosting on the cut side of the cake to adhere the track to the side of the truck.  Attach the track to the truck and carefully continue to add a bit of frosting around the track and place Kit-Kats around to finish off the track.  I did not wrap the entire track before attaching it to the truck because I was afraid the candy would just fall off.

For the bucket I had two chocolate Hershey bars.  I melted some chocolate to use as “glue” to build the bucket.  I carefully split one of the bars in half.  I dipped the edge of the bar in the melted chocolate and “glued” it to the bar that I left whole, creating an “L”.  While the chocolate dried I leaned them against a pan to hold it up.  Once dry I used two portions of the split bar and “glued” them to close off the bucket.  The bucket was open on two side.  Again, I was just winging it, I didn’t have any instructions.

While the bucket is drying use a spoon to spread thin layers of chocolate on wax paper to create the windows and grill.  I used the edge of a sharp knife to create straight lines on the chocolate .  Once cool I pressed the windows into the cake leaving the side that was on the wax paper out so that the window was nice and flat.

Once the bucket was ready I leaned it up against the front end of the truck and pressed it into a bit of chocolate frosting that I put down on the platter to secure it.

I crushed some graham crackers and filled the bucket and used some around the cake.

Firetruck Cake

I absolutely love making cakes, especially for kids.  I have a lot of fun searching the internet for ideas and inspiration.  This was for my husband’s godson.  This kid is obsessed with fireman.  When his mom asked him what kind of cake he wanted it needed to be a fire truck.  I was more than happy to come up with something.  When I looked on line most of what I was seeing was sheet cakes decorated with fondant or buttercream frosting piped with much more expertise than I have.  Since I have no training in cake decorating and I am much more comfortable constructing a cake this one became 3D.  I really didn’t know where I was going to start so I just started baking some cake.

I started with three sheet cakes.  One of the cakes stayed whole and became the base for the truck.  I used the other two to cut, layer and carve to create the structure of the truck.  I had to keep looking at images of fire trucks on line to get the right shape.  I wish I could give measurements for this but I was totally winging it and was just glad it resembled a truck in the end so I didn’t write anything down along the way.  The truck is three separate pieces that I attached with frosting.  There is the front end, center section and back end.

As you can see I decorated the base for the truck to sit on dark grey.  Green or brown would work here as well.  Using a chocolate frosting with crushed Oreo’s or graham crackers could look like it’s parked on dirt.  For the flames I made some the yellow frosting and added a few drops of dark orange coloring that I barely mixed in to create a variegated tone.  I just filled a frosting bag and piped around the edge of the cake to dress it up a bit.  This was kind of an after-thought when I was done with the truck.  Creating bricks or stones around the edge would be pretty fun.  I had the yellow frosting after piping the name and details so I went with it.

On a cake stand I constructed the cake, frosted it and let it sit for an hour or so to allow the frosting some time to dry a bit.  Once ready I slid two spatulas under the cake and carefully transferred it to the frosted sheet cake.

For the details I used chewy life-savers for the lights, After Eight Mint Chocolate Thins for the wheels and store bough fondant sheets that I cut for the windows.  I made the grey and yellow frosting for the finished touches.  To make it a bit more personal I printed a picture of the birthday boy and tapped it to the front window to make it look like he was driving.

I am very picky and like many I see the imperfections in what I create that others probably would not notice.  There were little things about the way this turned out that I didn’t love.  At times I wanted to start over again but my husband would have made me sleep on the porch LOL.  All of my concerns went away when I saw the look on this little boys face.  He saw no flaws, he only say a fire truck that he loved.  I was one happy auntie.