Construction Cake

by Maureen
(shavertown, PA )

Construction Cake

This year my oldest son turned 5. He is obsessed with all things construction so naturally I had to make him a contruction-themed cake. This cake was my first real attempt at creating a spectacularly decorated cake and despite a few errors, I feel I did a good job and am very proud.

The cake itself was a basic chocolate recipe, something I had made a hundred times. I'm certain a boxed mix would work just fine. The pan was just a basic cake pan size 8x8. I made a homemade butter cream frosting, and used regular green food coloring to represent grass.

As you can see in the picture, I'm not that great at frosting a cake yet, so it looks a bit sloppy. I later realized it would have been easier to leave the cake in the pan for the decorating process.

Once I got the cake frosted, I was ready to decorate - that was really fun. I found four different construction vehicles and placed them around the cake. Then I crushed cinnamon graham crackers and sprinkled that crumbs around. I used candy corns as construction cones to spell his name, chocolate covered raisins as rocks and added on chocolate-flaked cereal. The chocolate-flaked cereal was a mistake as it went stale rather quickly. Everything else held up great though.

A really nice touch is to add some of the foods used as dirt and rock to the vehicles.

For a first attempt, not too bad I think. I learned a few things, had a great time, and really impressed my birthday boy. It was a great way to create something special with very little skill or knowledge. Next time will be even better!