Dinosaur Cake

The only thing Bubba asked for concerning his birthday was a dinosaur cake. How could I not fulfill that singular request? If you know me, you know I would do everything possible to give him what he asked for...

So, going to my favorite avenue for ideas, Pinterest, I searched for dinosaur party ideas. There were so many to choose from, I wasn't sure where to start. I finally narrowed it down to the following: dinosaur track cookies, dinosaur eggs, a dinosaur veggie tray, a couple other dino themed snacks, the dinosaur cake and dinosaur treasure stones.

Writing it down now, I think I might have over-reached just a little...thankfully, we had already engaged the "My Gym" where we go to class to "host" the birthday party. Not having to clean or stress about the house in any way, freed up my time and allowed me to devote my energy to the fun and cool dino ideas. I started with the dinosaur cake because I planned at first to take it to school for his little party there. It turned out so good I decided to keep it for the actual party. 

I used the Wilton dinosaur pan. Since I've never decorated a cake like this, I wasn't really sure what to do after I baked it. I read and re-read the instructions as well as the comments and reviews. The hardest part, which wasn't really hard, just took a really long time, was making and mixing the icing. I made 1.5 times the suggested amount (don't ask me why, at the time it made sense) which was way too much. One of the best things I did was to buy tubes of pink and black. If/when I make the cake again, I'd probably buy most of the icing in tubes or color pre-made icing.

I kept telling myself that if I messed up, I could use the cake for cake balls. Luckily, it didn't come to that. As I progressed from one step to the next, it was so cool to see it really taking shape. I would recommend that you follow the steps. Some of them don't seem to make sense in the order they're given. However, it turned out well doing it the way they tell you to, so why mess with it? I would also recommend having a couple extra decorating tips. I didn't and had to switch bags and colors. When I realized I'd missed a couple steps during outlining, I had to improvise to fix it without the tip.

I had planned on buying some kind of cake plate or cake holder thing but when I went to the store, they only had really big ones or packs of them. So as you can see in the pictures, I used a pizza pan thing. Not very pretty but it did the job. It also fit perfectly into my cake carrier. I just couldn't figure out how to get rid of the ugly silver. Then I realized, as I was putting the "shells" around the edge of the dinosaur, why not just cover the silver with icing shells? I had tons of icing and would only throw it away if I didn't use it up. Perfect!

The finished cake was so amazing I about broke my arm patting myself on the back. I still can't believe I did something like that and that it turned out so well. I'm not sure if I'll do more of those kinds of things, but I sure won't be afraid to try. After all, it's just cake and icing, right? Tastes good no matter what it looks like...

Having done a pretty good job with what I thought would be the hardest part, I was ready to tackle the rest of my Pinterest ideas. Since I don't want to overwhelm you with my awesomeness, I'll blog about those later. :)