Making a kid's train birthday cake is one of the easiest kid's birthday cakes to make and yet one of the most impressive. You can add as many sweets to the trains cargo as you wish, and let the birthday boy or girl help you decorate this great birthday cake.

Start by making your favorite chocolate cake recipe in two bread tins, or other long baking tins. If you do not have this shape baking tin then you can either use aluminum tins or a normal square cake tin and later cut the square into oblong pieces. Depending on how many kids will be at the birthday party you can add more and more "cars" to the train by making extra rectangular cakes.

Cut the cakes into rectangles of approximately 15cm or 6inches in length, and 10cm wide.

Ice the cakes with frosting/icing of your choice. My favorite cake icing recipe is a simple mixture of two bars (200 grams) melted bitter chocolate and a carton (250ml) of cream, this is a delicious mixture and easy to make. It doesn't really matter if you decide to make your frosting white, red, brown or any other color, but I use the chocolate cream as described above. You can also use bought icing which comes in a tube or tub.

Use round cookies (like Oreos) for the wheels and attach two on either side of each train carriage, you can also stick smarties in the middle of the wheels using a bit of the icing.

Using liquorices or any long strip of candy, make a smaller rectangle on the top of each train carriage. Fill the rectangle on top of each train carriage with sweets/candy; this is the train's cargo.

Use another shorter piece of liquorices to join each of the train carriages/cars.

Here I used chocolate drops for the front of the engine instead of creating a grid.

For the train engine add a cylindrical piece of cake on top of one of the rectangular pieces of cake for the funnel. You can use a Twinkie or other cake with the appropriate shape. If your train funnel falls stick it with more icing, and you can even use a toothpick to spear the funnel to the train engine. Cover the funnel (about the size of the middle of a toilet roll) with the same icing as the rest of the train. On the front of the engine add a grid made of strips of liquorices. Attach another piece of cake, a small square, in the same way to the top of the engine, this is the box that the engine driver would sit in. Cover this with icing as well, and use strips of liquorices to make the outline of a window.

Your train cake is complete and you can make it as long or as short as you please. The kids will want all the goodies in the train's cargo as well as the cake itself. You can also add train tracks out of liquorices. You might also enjoy this recipe for easy to make chocolate balls.