So a month before, I started searching for instructions for making a dino cake. Some were easy, some not so easy. I settled on a design I had found on instructables.com. One night while my son was sleeping over his Aunt's house, I did a test run. I used a dense chocolate cake recipe that I usually use for cupcakes. One tip I've come across is NOT to use a box cake when doing cakes like this. They are usually crumby and don't cut as nicely. I baked 2 9-inch round cakes, let them cool, cut them up and assembled them into this shape. I wish I had taken a picture of the stencils I had made. Originally, the head was meant to stand up, but it just wouldn't do that, so this dino is resting. :)
I then did a thin layer of icing all over to seal in the crumbs. This is called a crumb coat or dirty icing. Then I used a small star tip (#14) to ice all over. (I cheated here and used Wilton's decorator icing.) I made little scales out of rolled fondant I found at the craft store. Eyes and toes were chocolate chips. This was the final result of my trial dinosaur.
And here is the birthday boy blowing out his candles.
