Kid’s building site / digger chocolate birthday cake

Posted in Baking by

This kid’s chocolate building site birthday cake looks great and is very easy to put together!

Kid's digger building site builder chocolate easy birthday cake

It was my elder son’s 5th birthday recently. It’s taken me a while to blog about this cake, but if you follow my posts you’ll probably already know I gave birth to our second son at around the time of my first son’s birthday and since then I’ve been a tad busy!

As I knew my sons’ birthdays would be very close together, I wanted to make a birthday cake which was simple and quick to assemble. Some internet browsing brought me to this building site / digger cake idea in the form of some photos. I did my best to copy what I saw, using my own cake recipe and various toy construction site pieces I already had.

Making the cake and buttercream

I used my most reliable chocolate cake recipe. You can find a full description of how to make the two circular chocolate cakes you’ll need for the digger cake in my Double Chocolate Easter cake post.

Alternatively, you could also use my chocolate fudge cake recipe.

Both these recipes also tell you how to make chocolate buttercream.

Kid's digger building site chocolate easy birthday layer cake

Assembling and decorating the digger cake

Clearly, you’ll need some plastic toy building site pieces to make this cake! I was lucky to already have the digger, cement mixer, cones etc. I gave them a good wash to make them food safe before putting them on the cake. I’m sure you can find things like this to buy online.

Stack your circular chocolate cakes on top of each other on your cake board, sticking them together with a layer of chocolate buttercream.

Cover about half of the top of the cake, towards the “back” of the cake, with chocolate buttercream. This will be the “muddy” area where the digger will sit.

Carve away a small part of the top and front of the cake to look like dug earth. Start small and then you can use a spoon or fork to crumble away part of the side of the cake. Leave some of the “earth” crumbs on the cake board.

Stick chocolate finger biscuits around the edge of the cake using another layer of chocolate buttercream as edible glue. More guidance about how to do this can be found in my chocolate finger cake post, but it’s honestly as straightforward as it sounds. I used Cadbury’s chocolate fingers, but I’ve also seen pictures of this cake where KitKats have been used. Cut the finger biscuits which will border the “dug earth” at the front of the cake down to size before sticking them in place.

Kid's digger building site chocolate easy birthday cake

Sprinkle some mini Smarties (M&Ms or similar would also be fine!) on the dug earth sections of the cake.

I made a small Happy Birthday sign from some card, fixed three wooden skewers on the back with sticky tape (toothpicks would also work), and stuck it into the back of the cake.

Once I had all the pieces ready, it took ten minutes to assemble and my son was delighted with it. I just wish I could make it every year!

Kid's digger building site chocolate easy birthday cake with chocolate finger borde easy cake for a boyr

I’m sorry if my explanation as to how to assemble this kid’s chocolate digger birthday cake isn’t very clear. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments below! 🙂

Claire Huston / Art and Soul

39 thoughts on “Kid’s building site / digger chocolate birthday cake”

    • Thank you very much! 🙂
      I made the cakes and buttercream the week before I went to hospital and froze them. Prepared and bagged up the rest of the stuff the day before I went in. The day after I got home it really did take 10 minutes to put together. Hope I can find something this easy next year! x

      Liked by 1 person

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      • This is brilliant, I am in the same position as you. My sons birthday is two weeks after the due date for baby number 2. He loves diggers so will be following your tips and getting some cakes and buttercream in the freezer in preparation.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. Oh my sweet mother of GoD this is amazing!!! Any chance you could fly over here and do something for my 7 yo’s birthday (next week-he asked for a minecraft cake-yeeks!!!) great to see you back and hope you’re all doing well x

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Thank you!
      I would love to be able to pop over 🙂 Although I’d have no idea where to start on a Minecraft cake!
      Baby doing very well even though he has a nasty cold. In fact, he’s doing better than I am because at least he gets to sleep most of the time 🙂
      Good luck with the cake! Let me know how it goes x

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • At the momentI’m possibly looking at sourcing one or talking to his aunt about her making one for a present (me baking it could be a surefire way to wreck the party!), but that might change, I’ll let you know! Hopefully his cold goes soon, I’ll give an extra strong wish for this cold weather to go away, bring on the spring, so many people seem to be sick these days!!

        Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you!
      I made the cakes and the buttercream before going into hospital and froze them. I also assembled all the other bits and pieces. The day after I got home from hospital it took me 10 minutes to put it all together. Brilliant! I can only hope all the cakes I make for the kids in the future are this easy to deal with 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  18. Pingback: Kid’s race circuit birthday cake | Art and Soul

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