Fire truck birthday cake

Evolution of a fire truck cake:











Lessons learned:

1. This recipe makes for a delicious cake, but it’s not ideal for molds. Though I greased the pan well, it’s so moist that a lot of it still stuck, only giving me the bare outlines of lines to follow. And a lot of little crumbs came off in the process of frosting it, making it tough to keep the white frosting white.

2. Make the cake the morning ahead and give it lots of time to cool (if you have room in your freezer to freeze the cake, that would be ideal, otherwise chill it in the fridge). I did the white frosting the night before the party and the rest the morning of. The good thing about this cake is that due to its moistness, it’s great a day later.

3. These directions are excellent. I followed them for making the frosting and doing the decorating. Even a non-artistic person like me can come out with something resembling a fire truck.

4. I invested in this cake carrier, which was a really handy way to both have a surface to frost it upon and have an easy way to cover and store it in the fridge. It also comes with a tray that holds either cupcakes or mini-cupcakes, so I’ll be using it in a few days to send River to preschool with birthday cupcakes.

5. Next time, I’d thin the frosting a little more than the recipe suggests. Perhaps it was too thick, or perhaps it was still too chilled from the fridge. But I had a very hard time working with the yellow, which was the first color I used. I was panting with exertion, my hand was cramped and I started to think I needed to call Mark and ask him to pick up a cake at the supermarket. Luckily, the other colors were much easier to work with. When the frosting flows quickly out of the tip, it makes all the difference.