The incredible, edible train

So if you have been reading my blog, you know I hate cupcakes. But that said, I actually love little cakes if they're baked in a funny shape. I have a sizable collection of pans that bake little cakes in the shapes of acorns and dinosaurs and rosebuds and castles and fish. I am always on the hunt for a new shape that I don't have. So I was delighted to find this wonderful pan that bakes cakes in the shape of train cars.

When I was a kid, my mother used to make birthday cakes for me and my sisters in the shape of a train. The cake was laboriously constructed out of pound cakes all linked together, with a jellyroll sitting on top of a slab of pound cake to form an old-fashioned steam-powered engine. She used chocolate cigarettes to make the cow catcher, M&Ms in the coal car and peppermint candies for train wheels. She might have viewed this pre-formed train pan as the sissy's way out, but I think it's cool. You can buy the pan for $34 from Williams-Sonoma.