Sam's 3rd birthday Construction cake

My mom used to make my birthday cake each year when I was little. I remember one year she bought me a cake instead (I don't remember why) I was very upset because it wasn't a "special" cake, lol. So I swore that when I had a child of my own I would make his cake special every year. #1 was a dinosaur, #2 was an airport and this year makes #3! I hope that he loves his special cakes as much as I loved mine and passes this tradition on to his future little ones.

I've had a lot of people want to know how I made the cake, so here it is. The white paper is holding back a bunch of gravel that will fall down when the cake is presented to my son.   This is what I used, but feel free to use it as a jumping off point for your own construction creation!

Materials:

Cakes:

2 boxes yellow cake mix

2 boxes dark chocolate cake mix

4 containers chocolate buttercream frosting

12 eggs

oil

yellow food coloring

Decorations:

"quart" sized carton of Whoppers

bag of gummy worms

Oreo cookies

Animal crackers

Bamboo skewers

tin foil

Figures:

Set of CAT construction vehicles

bag of construction figures and signs (I found both of these at KMART)

Bake cake and follow her directions for prepping it. Cover a large cookie sheet with foil and put it top down.  I started with placing one round towards the left side of an upside down cookie sheet. frost middle and lay down gummy worms. Push them into the frosting a bit. cut wedge out of second cake, then put it on top of bottom one. frost entire cake. Then take the third cake (you should have 4 total) and cut part off and set this aside (I used a springform pan side as the template. Cozy it up against the other cake. Frost top and gummy worm again. cut the same shape out and set aside. Frost the whole thing. Take one of the two cut outs and put it on top of the 2nd cake.

Stick a couple bamboo skewers in to help it stay. Frost. Cut other bamboo skewers to size and space them out around the cake to create buttresses for your retaining wall. Keep them about 3 whoppers apart. Then take your whoppers and stack them around the bottom of the cake -this is a great way to hide your messy frosting edges! I did 3, then 2, then 3 on most of mine. The first cake has only two rows because it is shorter.  Grind up animal crackers, then oreos in a food processor.  Apply to cake.

It's okay if you want to drive the toys around on the cake before putting them in their final places!  Keep the frosting containers around so you can use the small bits that are left over as an adhesive for the dirt ad gravel on the figures.

Most of all, enjoy and have fun!

Idea for slicing the cake to look like caution tape (will add photo once it's cut open) on the inside came from Here.

If you'd like to check out my other artistic endeavors, you can find me on facebook at GossamerScapes and Gossamer Memories Photography and also at GossamerScapes on Etsy.