Before you begin, I just want to clarify that by no means am I a Susie home maker type. I am just someone who enjoys challenging myself to jump in to new projects that spur creativity and enjoyment. This one I found myself loving, as I was able to conjure up escapades and humorous stories from my school bus riding days while making this cake. If I can do it, I know you can.
Here are a list of ingredients I used:
2 Banana Bread Box Mixes
1 White Vanilla Frosting
1 Lemon Frosting
4 Eggs
6 Tbl. Vegetable Oil
Yellow Food Coloring
Decorative Gel for Cakes in Black, Blue, Red
Mini Vanilla Wafer Cookies
Gum Drops
Cherry Sours
Toothpicks
I used two 9″ loaf pans from Rowe Pottery, lightly greased. Mix the banana bread ingredients together, which I’m not too proud to admit was from a box this time, pour in the bread mix evenly distributed between the pans, and set the two loaf pans in the oven.
Prepping for the fun to begin!
After they are in the oven, set your temperature to 375 degrees. It’s always a good idea to preheat the pottery with the oven to prevent shocking and cracking the pottery. After a quick 40 minutes, the bread was ready to cool, and smelled fabulous!
My house smelled fabulous!
While the bread was baking, I entertained myself by decorating mini Nilla wafers with faces. I just used the decorating tubes of colored gel available at any super market. I put these into the fridge to harden up and prevent smooshed faces. I also added yellow food coloring to lemon frosting, making it a realistic shade of school bus yellow.
When the bread is cooled and out of the pans, you’ll have some carving to do. Take one loaf, and cut the top rounded portion off of the loaf, and a sliver of the slant off both long sides so you get a pretty straight sided rectangle. This will be your bottom part of the bus. To attach it to a serving platter, take a bit of frosting and spread on the bottom of the loaf to act like glue and prevent it sliding out of control. Now take the second loaf and cut from the end 3-4 inches, and the slanted sides again. Attach this to your bottom loaf with frosting in between the loaves.
Now frost the entire cake in white frosting. This is a good foundation before adding the yellow, and also makes your windows in the bus. I recommend doing this part in air conditioning. I had some difficulty when the frosting kept wanting to ooze out and off the cake and refrigerated it for a half hour before applying the yellow layer.
Now all you have to do is add the yellow layer to the body of the bus, and add your details with candies and decorative gel! I used cherry sours for lights and gum drops for the stop sign and front lights. It helps to insert tooth picks into the candies then into the cake so they’re more secure and don’t drop off your gooey frosting. Oreo cookies make the tires, and the vanilla wafer kiddies are added into the window in any particular order. I found these adorable candle balloons that I couldn’t pass up to add some additional excitement to the ride.
Here is the finished product! Hope you have as much fun with it as I did!
