Second Birthday Cake

Time for another birthday cake! This year I went with the theme of 'dinosaurs' - my son is obsessed with them. He loves them. He calls them 'dinees'. We have quite a few. So of course I was on the hunt for a cake design to make his cake this year special. Since last year his cake was such a hit, I didn't want to make that a one time thing - so I went on the hunt for a good design. After searching and reviewing several ideas and techniques I settled on this cake design. Officially it's a dragon and not a dinosaur, but the effect is the same. :)

I followed the design of the cake carving based on the instructions, deviating a little bit (aka I didn't use ding dongs in my cake, I just created extra large cake 'muffins') I required 3 tubs of frosting to frost the entire thing between piecing the cake together for construction and then also covering it in green frosting. Sorry I forgot to take a picture prefrosting.

After I got him all frosted (taking 2 tubs to get it fully frosted) I then broke out the spray 'paint' food coloring. I hadn't used this medium of food dye before - but man was it fun. :) I used a darker green and orange and did some shading and spot placement on the dinosaur.

Then I made some fondant using the recipe that I used last year... leaving some white for the eyes and dyeing the rest orange for the dinosaur's spikes. Just used a knife to cut the spikes out and simply set them on the cake. After that was complete I frosted the entire board, and spread dyed coconut around it to create grass, along with some brown sugar for sand, and some colored blue sugar to make the lake and placed the volcano down... and wala the cake was complete.



Aside from cake baking time, construction, frosting, etc.. took about 3 hours off and on with me taking small breaks in between. Not too shabby. I finished it off by 'painting' with food coloring a '2' on the volcano and his name on the dino's leg. Sadly the only ones that got to enjoy it was our little family and Gran and PopPop because when our son woke the day of his party, he was sick. :( But the cake was tasty... even though the birthday boy had to wait until Sunday to enjoy any.