Construction Birthday Cake

This cake was so much fun to make! Originally I was just going to make an average square cake with a construction site on top of it, but I decided to up the cool factor a bit. I'm not going to lie, I was a little concerned about making this cake when I first started, but it actually turned out to be easier than I thought! By far the best part of this cake is that it's supposed to look like a construction site so the icing doesn't have to be perfectly smooth!

I start out by baking a 9" round vanilla cake. I thought for sure that Roman would want a chocolate cake, but apparently not. Once the cake was completely cool I turned it out onto a cutting board to start making it look like a 3. I started by cutting the came in half with a bread knife, which seemed to work fairly well.  I'm not one to free hand much when it comes to cakes, and heaven knows I wouldn't be able to cut a smooth half circle, so I found a cup to use to trace for the centre of the 3. I then used those inside pieces to cut pieces to fill in the centre of the 3 and to give the ends a bit of curve.

 Now the delicious and fun part; icing and decorating!! The chocolate buttercream I used for this cake is literally the best icing I have ever had in my life! It tastes very similar to the premade frosting you get at the grocery store but without that oily/fake taste the premade stuff has. I actually froze the leftovers to use later on because it's THAT good!

I start by putting a good sized blog of icing on the pieces I had cut out and sticking them to the body of the cake. Then I slathered the entire cake in a generous layer of chocolate frosting. I found that the cut pieces were crumbling on me a bit, so I popped the cake into the freezer to set up a bit. Just a few minutes was enough for the cake to become firm enough that it didn't crumbled when I was spreading the icing.

I found the small plastic construction equipment at Dollar Tree and they were the perfect size for the cake. I filled the cement mixer with icing and left a bit hanging out the top. I then filled the back of the dump truck with icing and chocolate rocks that I found at Bulk Barn. I decided to use the same technique with the loader bucket so it looked like the loader was filling the truck. A bit of icing on the wheels of the truck was enough to hold it in place. I crushed up chocolate cookie wafers and sprinkled them onto the cake to make a bumpy road of sorts and had the roller "smoothing them out" while another dump truck looking thing dumped the crumbs onto the cake. The chocolate covered caramel balls between the candles was a bit of a throw on because I had them, and felt like I should use them. This is why you should never buy you decorating materials until you know what you're doing. Now I have an entire bag of these balls that I'm going to have to eat. Oh the horror! I finished off the cake by lining the base with chocolate rocks. I really liked the way it love the way it looks, and it saved me from having to bust out the piping bag at 9pm!

Roman was PUMPED when he saw his cake in the morning. He pointed out all the equipment and was really excited that he could eat the rocks. I love making cakes like this for Roman (and soon to be Bianca) because I love the reaction I get from him. There is nothing better than seeing his eyes light up at the cake I've spent so much time on.

Do you make your kid's cakes? What was your kid's favorite cake and what was their reaction?