Construction of a 2

For Tot's birthday party last Saturday, I selected a construction theme. There is a huge road construction project directly on our route to daycare. He is absolutely enthralled with the dump trucks and loaders and dirt. Going with this theme, I also decided to make his cake. Last year, I purchased a cupcake 'cake' and it was really cute, but I wanted to 'get my hands dirty' this year.

My inspiration for the cake came from Baked Bree. She made a super cute cake for her son's third birthday, and I wanted to achieve a similar look, but less 'clean'. I also really liked this Cars themed cake, but I absolutely didn't want a 'licensed' birthday party either. I decided to combine the two cakes into one for the cake I call "Construction of a 2."

I baked three boxed cake mixes in 9x13 inch pans. I am a cake decorating novice, and while it's isn't hard to make a cake from scratch, it's not nearly as simple as a boxed mix. I made two chocolate fudge cakes and one marble cake. Incidentally, all THREE of these cakes broke when I flipped them out of the pans. I have flipped dozens of other cakes and they did NOT break, but these cakes, which needed to be pretty eventually, broke!

I slathered milk chocolate icing on one of the chocolate cakes, then stacked(and pieced) the other chocolate cake on top. Then I frosted them with chocolate icing and dusted the entire thing with Butterfinger crumbs that I made in the food processor. I used a template from Martha.Stewart to cut a 2 out of the marble cake, then frosted it with white icing. Fatal flaw: using two different colors of icing and not wanting one to mess up the other presents a problem when it is time to move a white frosted 2 onto a Butterfinger dusted 'site'. My neighbor helped me, and we moved it in pieces, then staked it down with toothpicks. I smoothed out the icing, covered the joints, and added Reese's Pieces. Once we got the cake to the local park for the party, I added some RP filled dump trucks and loaders, candles, and Tot's name. I made the cakes the night before I wanted to work with them and took a day off work. Dealing with the structure of the cake was quite challenging and frustrating at times (see broken cakes above). The decorating part was fun and relatively easy. I am VERY happy with the way it turned out, but I have given permission to my husband and my best friend to slap me if I decide to do this* again next year.
*I've cleverly left a loophole: Of COURSE I won't do THIS again because I've already done it. I would obviously make an entirely different cake...