Thomas the Tank Engine Birthday Cake

My son is turning 2 tomorrow. I'm so proud of him and how smart he is (I know I'm biased, but what parent doesn't want to believe that their child is just the smartest kid in the world?!?!). The years have gone by so fast. For his second birthday, we're doing a CARS theme. He's only 2 so I know he won't fully appreciate everything we're doing, but who cares. I'll post all the decorations later, but today, I'm going to talk about the cake I made for his first birthday.

This cake is really easy. Anyone can make it. I got a lot of compliments. However, I fully believe that anyone can do pretty much anything, they just need to get off their butts and do it.
I just used simple chocolate cake mix. Make sure that you grease your pan, flour it generously, and let it cool completely before taking your cake out to make sure it doesn't fall apart.

After you have both layers of your cake done, cut one in half. Stack your cake so that it's 1 layer on one side and 3 layers on the other side. You can put your icing on now. I put green on the bottom layer for the grass and blue on the top two layers for the sky.

I found some chocolate rocks at Walmart. If yours doesn't have any, they might have some at a Fresh Market or something (or if you plan far enough in advance, you can order them off the internet).

I put the rocks around the bottom. Then, for the tunnels, I melted some chocolate and put it on wax paper so that it doesn't stick. Then, while the chocolate is still melted, put rocks in a U shape. I made 3 in case one of them broke.

Before they were completely solid, I cut the extra chocolate from around the rocks. Then, I put them in the freezer to make them extra solid. While those were drying, I piped some railroad tracks and some birds onto the cake.

Then I added some white frosting to the top. It kind of gives the illusion of clouds. I added some candles. My mom had the "1" so I'm not quite sure where that came from, but I was able to get the "O-W-E-N" and the train from Party City. The top is the best place for candles. If you don't put anything up there, it looks a little plain.

When the tunnels are finally done, you can add those to the cake.

I added some extra green around the edges and a few rocks. Now you can add your Thomas the Tank Engine to the cake. This was the only one I could find. Of course, the week after his birthday, I saw one in Target that was half the size. It would have looked a lot better.