Hello All

I'm brand new to this site and I thought I would get some ideas from those of you who have been doing this a while. For my son's 4th birthday we are going to do a Train theme. Not Thomas, but based off the Golden Book "The Little Red Caboose". When it comes to the cake I'm having a hard time deciding if I want to make the cake into the train,...or make the cake a mountain that a small train is going up. I like the mountain idea, but so far haven't found many cakes shaped like mountains. Has anyone seen on the web pics of a mountain cake? I would appreciate any ideas

First, welcome to CC!!!

Second, you can do a search on here for photos. Go to the "GAllery" then go to "Search", type in mountian and you'll come up with mountain cakes.

I vote for the mountain cake...just bake a sheet cake, then a cake in the Wilton Wonder Mold or an oven-proof batter bowl (like you would for a doll cake). You could even put little animal figures and such on the sheet cake part along the tracks...just thinking of the pages in that book that have all the animals, tee-pees, kids etc. watching the train. Good luck!

When my son was little, one of the first cakes i did was a train. What i did was a round cake base then the wonder mold or use a bowl that is oven safe to make the mountain. I then found a small train that ran on batteries with a track, and had the train running around the mountain. It was one of my cooler cakes.

Hello and Welcome
I really like the mountain idea
Here are a couple mountain cakes:

• 
  
• http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo-1235624.html
  
• http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo-1207194.html
  

And here is the mountain "gallery":
http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&meta=search&type=full&search=mountain

Good Luck
Sounds like an Awesome Cake

Here's a mountain and train cake I made for my son's 2nd birthday. The layers are 12, 9, and 6.

I used licorice for the track and added a toy train as a prop.

how about a 3D Little Red Caboose.

two 9x13 cakes cut into half (9x6.5 )

3 half layers of cake stacked for main body

then final half layer cut in half again (9x3.25) and stacked for the top offset so large space to front of caboose and less to back.

gumpaste roofs formed around an can of appropriate size (juice, oatmeal, etc.) to avoid carving curve into cake, just lay on and fill gap w/ extra icing.

cake rests on extra long cakeboard -- extra sticks out the back to form the base of the platform. Lollipop stick or skewers form room supports, railing, etc.

gumpaste buttons for lights, wheel, and detail at top of roof supports.

extra pieces of cardboard or piece of carved styrofoam for the steps.

ice in red BC and add gumpaste/fondant or BC windows, doors, and RI flowers for the little wreath.

HTH

depending on what you are comfortable doing I have a cake in my photos with fondant covered mountains.