Today I'm going to show you how to make an adorable train cake with spiral tiers!
I just love incorporating the train theme with spiral cut tiers. The look of the winding train tracks and train is so unique! This design would make a wonderful young birthday cake!
More Spiral Tier Cake Tutorials
There are so many different styles of cakes that work well with spiral tiers-- We have a sweet Sledding Snowman video with a spiral tier design which also demonstrates covering the tiers in fondant.
We also have a Snake Cake with a fondant snake that winds around a spiral cut tree stump!
Notes on the Spiral Tiers
There are a couple of points that I wanted to emphasize for our train cake.
In the video, I am using 9" and 6" stacked tiers. The 3" size difference works well for me because it allows me a difference of 1 ½" to work with all the way around, and therefore I am able to make a ledge that is 1 ½" wide.
If there is a 4" difference between your tiers, you could even bump up the width of your ledge to 2", if you would like to have room next to the track for more grass, flowers, etc., or you stick to the 1 ½" ledge if you would like to have a little more cake :0) ---
A 2" difference between your tiers would be more difficult to work with, because you would only have 1" of space around the base of the top tier to work with in order to create your track.
A track this narrow would of course require a train that is smaller and more narrow than the one in my video. For this reason, I recommend a difference of at least 3" between tiers.
Enjoy the Video!
Thanks so much for stopping by! If you give this train cake a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below!
Can you tell me what Americolor gels you used?
I know sky blue for the sky, but what about the blue, red, and yellow fir the train and the shades of green for the grass and trees. If you don't remember, can you recommend the colors to use? This is my first time making scale like this.
Thanks,
Angela
Hi Angela, I'm glad that you are making this! -
I most likely used Americolor Super Red, Sky Blue, Lemon Yellow, & Super Black (for the grey). The green is probably either Americolor Electric Green or Wilton Leaf Green. Of course you can change things up, but these are the shades that I often use. Good luck!
I'm guessing it would be a bad idea to use carrot cake ( which my son would like for the cake). I have 2 Lamborghini model cars ( 2" x 5" wide, metal) I want to put on the cake with a road.
Would I need to dowel under each car? I might use fondant on the cake instead of buttercream, but not sure. Thank you.
I'm guessing it would be a bad idea to use carrot cake ( which my son would like for the cake). I have 2 Lamborghini model cars ( 2" x 5" wide, metal) that I want to put on the cake with a road.
Would I need to dowel under each car?
Also, I might use fondant on the cake instead of buttercream, but not sure. Thank you.
Ok, please disregard above. Carrot cake is a very bad idea. Sorry for that double entry.
Ack! Paintmycake, I'm sorry--I started to answer this yesterday and then was going to come back to it after figuring what size tiers would be best to give you the needed ledge width (ours was just 1 1/2 wide)- I was also going to advise against the carrot cake if your recipe is anything like ours (too moist) --Sounds like you have things figured out! As a side note, I do dowel/use at least a bubble tea straw beneath any toppers or decorations that have a bit of weight to them. Good luck!
Hi, are you able to give me any idea how much buttercream I am likely to need to cover and decorate this cake? (using a 6 inch and 8inch pan)? Thanks!
Hi Wuzza, I would treat these tiers as if they were just ordinary tiers when calculating the number of cups of frosting required. I'm attaching a link to Wilton's Party Servings Chart below which includes a column for frosting amounts.
http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/baking-serving-guide.cfm
Also, as I mentioned above the video, I used 9" and 6" tiers because it gave me a bit more room to carve the "track" into the cake. If you are working with 8" and 6" tiers, you won't want to make your track as deep. Good luck! Let us know if you have any more questions.
hi, can i use fresh cream/ whip cream instead of butter cream ?
Hi Rupa, Whipped cream would not work well for this cake.
Hi Melissa,
I love your cake, i was wondering if i could use chocolate cake insted of your flavour. Would that be sturdy enough to carve and will dark chocolate color show through the blue and green icing.
And also want to know is it possible to put few cars made from fondant on to of the cake , will it be too much weight for the cake?...
And also want to know what kind of cracker pk you used to amke those trains, do you know anything similar here in australia?
Sorry for so many question, cz i really love ve to make this cake...