Today I will share how I made my son an easy and fun construction site themed birthday cake. There are many ways in which you can make a construction site cake, believe me: I spent a few hours pinning ideas from Pinterest. :) I suggest you first find whatever construction vehicles you wish to use for the cake (they can be brand new or preloved ones). I would make sure they are of similar look and scale -otherwise it won't look right, at all. When I went on the hunt for vehicles I found at Caterpillar brand set of 4 for $9.99 at Target, but I thought they would be far too small (they were of the Hot Wheels scale). I chose two plastic trucks for $1.99 each in the sand and water play section. They were larger, but not very big, in fact I wanted larger trucks. I am glad I did not get bigger trucks, because when I made the cake I realized how big the cake was NOT in comparison to the trucks! So I got creative and decided not to limit myself to the surface of the cake for the placement of the vehicles.
Once I gave myself permission to not stick to the surface of the cake I was able to have fun and make it work for the size of the cake. Here's an image of the finished cake (please note that I didn't go all out for size and "fancy" because it was just for our immediate little family.
To make the cake I did a "doctored up" box cake recipe. I used two boxes of Duncan Hines and two packages of chocolate pudding. Recipe here. Once I baked the cakes and they were cooled, I put gummy worms and pudding between the layers (I used an additional package of pudding mix to make pudding). I was inspired by "dirt cups."
I cut the cake down a bit and took a big chunk out in a corner to make it look like it was dug out by the claw part of the one truck (I clearly don't know the terms). I frosted the cake with a homemade frosting with black dye to give it an asphalt look.
Next, I crumbled the cut off cake pieces and mixed it with pudding, crushed Oreo cookies, some extra frosting and some rock candies that I purchased at our local Winco store. I filled the dumping part of the dump truck with some of the mix and stuck the candle in the "load."
I put some of the mix by the "dug out" area to look like it was torn away from the "construction site."
I decided to make it look like the dump truck dumped out the number "2" on to the cake. I used the rock candies to highlight the crushed Oreo "2" I put on the cake (it was not showing against the very dark frosting).
Some more images of the cake:
Once I gave myself permission to not stick to the surface of the cake I was able to have fun and make it work for the size of the cake. Here's an image of the finished cake (please note that I didn't go all out for size and "fancy" because it was just for our immediate little family.
To make the cake I did a "doctored up" box cake recipe. I used two boxes of Duncan Hines and two packages of chocolate pudding. Recipe here. Once I baked the cakes and they were cooled, I put gummy worms and pudding between the layers (I used an additional package of pudding mix to make pudding). I was inspired by "dirt cups."
I cut the cake down a bit and took a big chunk out in a corner to make it look like it was dug out by the claw part of the one truck (I clearly don't know the terms). I frosted the cake with a homemade frosting with black dye to give it an asphalt look.
Next, I crumbled the cut off cake pieces and mixed it with pudding, crushed Oreo cookies, some extra frosting and some rock candies that I purchased at our local Winco store. I filled the dumping part of the dump truck with some of the mix and stuck the candle in the "load."
Some more images of the cake:
Some things I would do differently next time (I may make another construction cake for his 3rd birthday when I plan to throw a party for him):
I would make the cake much larger and use smaller scale construction machines. I would make a few tiers too.
I would make the frosting less dark and maybe just a chocolate frosting OR make it look like grass with green frosting piped like grass or green tinted coconut.
I would make the frosting less dark and maybe just a chocolate frosting OR make it look like grass with green frosting piped like grass or green tinted coconut.
Lastly, I would not use gummy worms in the layer (good idea, not so easy to cut and not so tasty with the pudding -gives it as weird taste like there is fruit juice in the pudding).
Some cakes I found on Pinterest that I got inspiration from:
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