Dinosaur Volcano Cake

I don't know that you can call this a tutorial, but more of a basic here is what I did to create my son's dinosaur birthday cake.  Photos along the way.  Thought I'd share if anyone was interested in recreating a similar cake. If so, please send me a photo.  I'd love to see it!

I'm no cake decorator, as you'll see in the following photos. I do enjoy making birthday cakes for my kids though! I think this just proves that about any mom can pull off a fun cake.  My kids didn't care about any of it's imperfections!  Just fun and tasty! 

Nate is holding my recipe...or rather the recipe I use for chocolate cake and icing.  You can find it on the back of a Hershey's Cocoa container.  It's called "Pefectly Chocolate" and it is perfectly delicious.  My family's favorite chocolate cake and I can't count the number of times I've made it.  Really, homemade cake is pretty simple and tastes so much better than box mixes!!  Yum!

 Have you watched Cake Boss? Love that show.  Love The Next Great Baker!! I could never be on it, but I've picked up some tricks.  Like carving out of rice krispie treats.  So, I made a double-batch and dumped the pile on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray.  As they were partially cooled, I put a little butter on my hands to prevent sticking and shaped them.  Then as they set more, I was able to refine the shape.  This was much easier than I anticipated.

Oh, the dinosaur.  Found in the dollar bin at Wal-mart.  It was too big to fit the whole dino in the mountain, so my husband cut the poor fellow in half. Nate wanted a dinosaur looking like he was coming out of a cave, so this was my best effort. 

 So here is the chocolate cake, baked in a 9 x 13 pan.  Then I iced it with the "Perfectly Chocolate" frosting and  once completely cooled, I sat my mountain and volcano on top of my cake.  I did test the sizing of my mountain and volcano, but sitting them on the un-iced cake while I was shaping them.  That gave me the best view of how it would look.

Now, for the water.  I also made some buttercream icing, recipe from Wilton.  You can add some Wilton blue gel to it, but I had some dark blue icing that comes in the tubes in the cake section at the grocery store.  I added a bit of that to the buttercream and got the lighter blue.  Then made a river.  Easy!

The same tubes of icing in the grocer's cake section were used for my lava.  I bought red and yellow.  Just mixed to get the look on the cake.  My husband made fun of my lava making skills.  You can too! I won't mind. But, it didn't take lava perfection to impress a five-year old.  He loved the volcano!! ;-)

I did add some green Wilton gel to some buttercream to make the grass.  Nate is using a disposable icing bag and I did purchase Wilton tip 233, the grass tip.  Spent $1.84 on it.

Here Nate is adding some smaller dinosaurs. We finished adding grass.  We used cocoa puffs for rocks and I tried to do a nice edging around the cake. 

Added the candle to the volcano of course! Where else would you put fire and added his name?  My handwriting skills need some work.  In real life and on cakes. haha!  There you have it, one delicious, fun dinosaur birthday cake that any mom can make.

I think the best part, other than eating rice krispie mountain with chocolate frosting, was making the cake with Nathan.  He loves to help in the kitchen and really enjoyed helping with his cake.  I appreciate these moments so much!!  He's growing fast!!  When my first baby turned five I cried.  The third time around, I cried too.  The first time, I told my husband that the baby days were over and now I was preparing her to leave home someday.  At 13 1/2 now, that reality is closer than I'd like!  My practical husband told me I was preparing her to leave home from the moment she was born.  Okay, whatever! haha!  But, this time the tears were different.  Some were happy because I am just so in love with this little boy!  I think this age is my favorite time with him.  He is so creative and his mind fascinates me.  Some of the tears were from a rejoicing heart.  I can't tell you how incredibly blessed I am to be allowed to be mom to four amazing children.  I can hardly believe God has enriched my life so beautifully, so perfectly!!!