{Caution! Beware of bulldozer truck birthday cake }

I like to think that it is still Summer time despite the fact that it is getting colder and I have to bring a light jacket everywhere I go now. Everything else seems “perfectly Summer” until I see construction sites everywhere in the morning when I drive to work. I gotta reroute to avoid congestion and all closed lanes. I hate constructions. That has always been the case, until when I had to make a birthday cake in a construction theme. That was probably the only time when I actually “studied” closely at the construction sites and felt inspired in some way.

{ This is the sketch of the initial idea of the cake in a shape of a bulldozer truck,  but of course a lot of tweaking during the making }

My partner, Tammy and I were both pretty excited about this cake because it was our first time doing it in 3D. Fortunately, the design of the truck is fairly simple, at least that's what we think. We imagined it to be like a rectangular shape. We just need to trim a part of the rectangle out to make it look more truck-like. We frosted the chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting first and then covered the cake with yellow fondant. But the covered cake was quite lumpy because we rolled out the fondant a bit too thin. Oh well, it’s part of the learning process. It looked a bit like the magic school bus at this stage.

{ Doesn't this look like a magic school bus? }

We used toothpicks to secure the 4 black wheels onto the cake as they are kind of heavy to be "glued" with water. We added the two headlights on top so that it looks less like a magic school bus and more like a bulldozer. Then, for the shovel part, I personally find it quite challenging. I originally wanted it to curve almost like a half cylinder but the shape did not stay put even leaving it out to dry for hours. So, we ended up tweaking the design and used the body of the truck to support the curve part of the shovel. We trimmed the zig-zag pattern using scissors. At this time, the bulldozer truck has finally come into place!

{ The challenging shovel is now added! Looks like a bulldozer truck now }

For the soil, we made use of the leftover cake that we trimmed off from the body (good that it’s a chocolate cake), crumbled them and “glued” them together onto the shovel with little bit of royal icing mixed with cocoa powder (so it’s brown and blends in with the chocolate cake). We made the birthday boy’s name out of orange fondant and poke tiny holes around the border to resemble metal work. After having the main structure of the truck, we then added in all the little details such as, the helmet, road sign, license plate (with birthday boy’s name and his age), wheel covers, tire marks and pylon.

{ Dotted border around fondant letters to resemble metal work }

{ Construction accessories, helmet and road sign added }

{ pylon and tire marks added on pavement board }

{ License plate with birthday boy's name and age }

The final cake doesn’t really look exactly like what we have sketched but at least it was a good reference.


Here is the picture of the birthday boy, Blake with the cake. Look at his face  :)