School Bus Birthday Cake

Here’s a look at my cute little nephew’s 2nd birthday cake. He loves trucks and his favourite colour is yellow, so my brother asked for a school bus cake. He also suggested a 3D cake, but I don’t think I’m there yet! I did a quick google images search for ideas, and there are LOTS out there. This is the main idea I took inspiration from, adding donuts for wheels, and a little picture of Matthew in the window :)

I baked my favourite chocolate cake in a 9×13 pan, cut one long strip off the bottom, and added it to the end to make it longer.

 

Next, I mixed up my favourite buttercream icing, and tinted about 1/2 cup with black gel food colouring, and the rest with golden yellow gel food colouring. I crumb coated the whole thing, which got pretty messy, especially in the areas where the cake had been sliced. Crumb coating is basically just putting a thin layer of icing on the cake, which acts as a base coat. After the crumb coat, the cake goes into the fridge for about 30 minutes – an hour, and as the icing chills, it essentially locks the crumbs in place, so when you do your second coat, no crumbs are visible and it looks great.

Once the second coat of icing was on, I filled a piping bag with the black icing and a small round tip, and added the detail to the cake.

I printed off a stop sign and taped it to a file folder so it had a thicker backing, and cut it out. Here I’m just holding it over the cake to get an idea of the finished product!

At the party, I added the stop sign and Matthew’s picture, and my brother put on the candle.

Last step! Blow out the candle and dig in!