Cooper's Fire Truck

My 5-week cake hiatus is finally over! This week I got to make a fire truck cake for my co-worker's nephew, Cooper, who is having his 3rd birthday party tomorrow.

I broke out a new toy for this cake - a brick-patterned impression mat that I bought at a craft store. I stumbled upon it in the copper tooling section, of all places! 

I'm starting to learn that craft stores are a great resource for caking - a lot of the clay tools work just as well as fondant tools (e.g. my handy dandy Makin's Professional Ultimate Clay Extruder, that I use for everything!)

My handy dandy Makin's extruder

I'm told Cooper had been asking for a fire truck cake for months, ever since he saw someone make one on Youtube (apparently this 3-year-old shares my pastime of watching cake tutorials on the internet?) His mom sent a picture of the cake he wanted, and I set off to find some guidance on building the structure of the cake. Here's a video from Betty Crocker Kitchens, and here's a link to instructions I found at Disney Family Fun magazine online - it has has nifty graphics showing how to cut and stack your cake.


The cake was rainbow inside. Here's a picture collage showing how easy it is to make a rainbow cake (except for the lots of extra dishes, as shown in the last picture.)

Et voila!