My son loves anything with wheels! Last year he was crazy about trains, so I made him a train birthday cake. This year, we asked him if he wanted to buy a cake at Safeway. He said yes and we went to look at designs at the store. There were so many to choose from! My husband took pictures of all the ones that he was interested in. He looked over the pictures over the next few days. When we asked him if he wanted to pick one of these or have mom make a fire truck birthday cake, he picked Mom! I had a brief whoo-hoo moment that my son picked me! Honestly though, my son most likely just had too many choices and couldn’t decide so he just picked what was safe and comfortable to him – Mom. I don’t mind.
This fire truck birthday cake can be as simple or as detailed as you want to make it. Feel free to use store bought icing to cut down on the time. I chose to use Cool Whip frosting because it’s not as sweet as store bought icing. Perhaps when I learn to make real whipped cream, I can use that instead of Cool Whip to make it “healthier.” Cool Whip on its own is a bit hard to frost; it doesn’t hold structure well. So I mixed in pudding mix to help it hold its shape.
I didn’t want to end up with a pink fire truck so bought the Wilton Color Right Red gel. Even after 40 drops, the frosting seemed to have a slight pink tint to it. But after refrigerating and letting the frosting rest, the frosting turned out to be truly fire engine red.
Fire Truck Birthday Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 box cake mix My son chose Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil's Food Cake Mix
Frosting
- 1 8oz tub Cool Whip Or you can make your own whipped cream
- 1 3.4oz box JELL-O Pudding & Pie Filling Instant Vanilla Mix
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 0.64 fl oz bottle Wilton Color Right Red
- 1 box assorted gel food gel colors (red, yellow, green, blue) to make gray frosting for the grill
Fire Truck Decorations
- 1 stick smarties candies for the front/back headlights, console buttons in the middle of the fire truck
- 2-8 oreo cookies 4 cookies as wheels, 2 cookies as rear door, cream as windows
- 2-3 starbursts (red, orange) sirens
- 8 pretzel sticks ladder
- 1 fruit leather (cut into strips) hose, number 4
- 1 mini twix hose accessories
Instructions
Bake the Cake
- Follow the instructions on the cake box. Pour half the batter into a 8.5×4.5 loaf pan and the other half into another 8.5×4.5 loaf pan. The cake will bake for about 45 minutes. Insert toothpick into cake and make sure the toothpick pulls out cleanly.
- While the cake is baking, start preparing the cool whip frosting.
Cool Whip Frosting
- Mix the pudding mix with the milk until smooth.
- Fold in the Cool Whip until completely mixed.
- Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Create the Base and Raised Platform
- While the cool whip frosting is resting in the refrigerator, decide what you want the birthday cake to sit on and wrap it in foil or whatever color scheme you decide you'd like. I had a square board that I wrapped in foil.
- If you would like your fire truck to be raised up, instead of setting flat on the base, you have to create a raised platform. Trace the bottom of the loaf pan on a piece of sturdy cardboard. Wrap this cardboard in foil. The cake will sit on this cardboard.
- Cut 10 rectangular pieces of cardboard (smaller than the width of the loaf pan). Tape 5 of the pieces together to form two legs that will raise the platform . Wrap these in foil.
- Place the two base where you think you'd want the cake. Tape these two base down.
Create Color Cool Whip Frosting
- After 30 minutes, scoop out about 1 cup of the cool whip pudding mixture into a bowl. For the gray frosting, drip 2 drops of each color of food coloring (red, yellow, green, blue) into the mixture and mix completely until the whipped cream mixture is completely gray, free of white streaks. Cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed.
- Scoop out about 2 cups of the cool whip pudding mixture into another bowl. For the red frosting, drip about 40 drops of the Wilton Color Right Red into the mixture and mix completely until the whipped cream mixture is completely red, free of white streaks. Cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed.
- Note: there will be leftover Cool Whip frosting! I only used half the amount made.
Decorate
- Once the cake is done baking and out of the oven, let it cool COMPLETELY on a wire rack. This could take up to 2 hours.
- Once it is cooled, use a serrated knife to cut and level off the tops of the loaves of cake.
- Place one loaf on the loaf size cardboard that was created earlier. Spread some of the white cool whip frosting on this first loaf. This frosting will act as a glue for the second loaf which will be placed on top of the first loaf.
- In the center of the loaf, cut out a 1 to 2 inch notch from the top of the cake. This notch will be the mid-section console of the fire truck. Frost this portion of the fire truck gray.
- Frost the rest of the fire truck red. This will be the crumb coating. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Frost the fire truck red again. Hopefully this time, you won't have any crumbs while you are frosting and it makes the cake look cleaner. Refrigerate again while we gather the other supplies.
- Decorate the fire truck as you desire with various candy. In our firetruck, I used the creme filling of a couple of oreo cookies to create the windows, smarties to create the control buttons on the gray mid section console, smarties to create the front and back headlights, red and orange starbursts to create the sirens on top, pretzel sticks to create the ladder, twix to create the hose accessories next to pretzel stick ladder, fruit leather cut up into thin pieces and rolled up to create the hose on the side, oreos cut into rectangles to be the windows/back door. Use your imagination!
- Now for the finishing touch! Put tape (either double sided or folded over) on the two bases that was created earlier. Insert a spatula under the cardboard that is holding the cake and lift it onto the two bases that was created earlier. Gently push it down so that the tape can start holding it in place.
- Put the 4 Oreo cookies wheels on. If it's too loose, put frosting on the back of the cookie to act as glue.
- Pipe the gray frosting into a cake decorator tool. With the tool, trace along the entire bottom edge of the fire truck and around the wheels. Draw three lines on the front of the truck to act as "grill". Put a dot in the center of the oreo wheels.
- Refrigerate until ready to serve!
