Made by Mabel Monday- Dinosaur Cake

For Palmer's fourth birthday he was adamant that he wanted a dinosaur birthday cake. So here is what I came up with:

This was actually much easier than it looks and even if you have never taken a cake class you could make this too!

After baking your cake run a knife around the edge to loosen the sides. Turn the cake onto a cooling rack. I put Saran wrap over the cake and placed it outside in the cold to let it firm up and finish cooling completely. Then I frost the cake with a brown tinted butter cream frosting. I then put the cake back outside for about 15 minutes (this step is called crumb frosting). Once it was set up outside I then frosted it again with the brown frosting.

For the volcano I baked two 6 inch cakes. After letting it cool and leveling the top I frosted in between and stacked the two cakes. I then used a bread knife to carve the two cakes into the volcano shape. I frosted the volcano with the same brown butter cream and then place it outside to setup.

Once the volcano setup I used a spatula to place the volcano on the cake. I used red sprinkles to create the lava and blue sprinkles to make the lake. I then found and washed some of my son's toy dinosaurs, rocks, and trees. I placed them on the cake also.

Finally I added a little bit of green coloring to the brown to create the leaf color. Using a piping bag and a leaf tip I covered the top edges with simple leaves. I should have put a border on the bottom but I ran out of frosting and did not want to make a new batch. I quickly frosted Happy 4th Birthday along the bottom and whala! There you have it!


*I thought for fun I would start doing simple tutorials on Mondays! Let me know what you think.