Fire Truck Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

Sometimes it feels good to leave the baking in the hands of the professionals, especially when it’s something as complicated as a novelty birthday cake. If you’d rather not attempt the cake yourself, start by calling your local bakeries and supermarkets to see whether they can make one for you. However, don’t be intimidated! You can make a great cake and save a ton of money by doing it yourself!

Photo cake
You can make a stunning cake with very little effort using the magic of photographic icing sheets. This technique allows you to transfer a full-color image to a cake effortlessly. All you need to do is choose and buy the photo from the images below. Then just bake and frost a sheet cake and lay the icing sheet on top for instant decoration. Add your own touches, a squeeze-tube icing border, a few jellybeans or other candies, some candles and voila! Some ideas for the photo include:

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Simple fire truck sheet cake
If you’re feeling more ambitious, you can make a fire truck cake fairly simply out of a single sheet cake. When it cools, cut a small rectangle out of the upper left corner to create the windscreen, and then frost the whole cake with vanilla frosting tinted red. To decorate, you will need white and yellow icing in squeeze tubes, and a few coils of soft black licorice. Use the white and yellow icing to pipe in the windows, “Fire Dept.” writing and other details. Coil two pieces of black licorice into pinwheel shapes to make two wheels, and press them into the bottom edge of the cake. You can also use the licorice to make a ladder to place along the upper edge of the cake. This will take a bit of fiddling but can be really cool!

Advanced fire truck molded cake
If you’re a confident baker and decorator, you can order the Fire-truck-shaped cake pan, which comes with frosting and decorating tips. This cake is sure to look exactly as you want it’s just up to you to decorate it!

Firetruck Cupcakes
An alternative to a large fancy cake are cupcakes! Here are a few Firetruck cupcake ideas:

Simple fire truck cupcakes
Bake a batch of cupcakes and frost them with vanilla frosting tinted fire-truck red. On top of each, place a fire engine mini cake candle from Amazon. Just before serving, light each candle, and have the birthday boy or girl blow them all out with the help of friends.

Dalmatian cupcakes
Make chocolate cupcakes, frost with white vanilla frosting, and sprinkle with chocolate chips to make the Dalmatian’s “spots.”

Edible Image Firetruck Cupcakes
Similar to the edible image cake you can make edible image cupcakes. After baking, cooling and icing the cupcakes simply apply the edible images to each cupcake. These look great and the kids love them!
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