3d tayo and school bus cupcakes

Jenny Klonowski
Oct 7, 2023
2 min read

My son was turning 2 and the first word he says every morning is bus. He loves them. I'm not sure why but I took it and ran with it for his second birthday!

I envisioned these as being 3d but using frozen buttercream transfers instead of a mold. My first batch of yellow busses worked ok. If I had more time I could have made them better but it was good practice for the center of the party Tayo the friendly bus.

I actually have terrible pictures. I think I missed the pics of the best busses but you get the idea.

Here's the process. This will only work with buttercream or a frosting that freezes well. Print out a template mirrored from what you want because your working up said down. Here's my tayo template and school bus.

Tayo ended up having doors on the wrong side for the US but the doors were on the right side some where!

It's just like my last frozen buttercream project. Outline, freeze, details, freeze, fill, freeze, and finally top layer then freeze. Thinner buttercream prevents air gaps and using a toothpick to spread after you filled will her prevent bubbles in the bottom. I was rushing so I didn't do this enough.

Once your designs are complete freeze again with a think layer of frosting. Next was crumb coating cake squares.

I thought just adding a thick layer of frosting them sticking the busses to the side would be all I needed but the frosting made the busses bigger than the transfer.

I could have made these more cohesive but I had to move on to Tayo.

My cake squares were frosted and refrozen.

I put whatever leftover frosting on the back to glue them to the cake.

I filled in the cracks with blue frosting them smoothed it out.

The finished protect could have been improved with more smoothing and better measurements but I do recommend this technique. The frosting transfers could really be made weeks ahead of time and the transfer is so simple. Here's the finished display.