A Roaring Good Time

I have often thought to myself that once my children were grown and gone, life would blend into a quiet existence, boring, with little to do.  The second phase of adult life brings better things, like grandchildren!!  Our youngest grand, turned 5 on the weekend and he had requested a dinosaur cake.  I am thrilled that our daughter allows me to make their cakes, it gives me something to do, and hopefully the Little's will remember that.  So this was going to be my first attempt at a dinosaur.

We started with some rice krispy treats fashioned into a dino head.  I didn't take a picture of what I used for a mold, but I picked up a rubber dinosaur hand puppet at the dollar store washed it out, sprayed the inside with Pam and stuffed it with the rice krispy mixture.  When it was set I just cut it off and came out with this.  I had some trouble keeping the mouth open, but I solved that as you will see later in this post.

I made 3 boxes of cake mix, 2 chocolate and 1 white.  That gave us 3 layers to the cake.  I made those a week in advance and froze them, I find it easier to work with a frozen cake to crumb coat.  They aren't as delicate, and they don't fall apart as readily.

I had a plan somewhat, but I thought we should see how this developed.  At the last minute I decided that I would cover the head with fondant.  Originally I planned to use butter cream, but someone suggested the fondant, and I have had limited and not good experience using this stuff, but I gave it another try and am really glad that I did.

After applying a layer of butter cream, I began working my fondant onto the head.  I stuck it back in the freezer for a bit to get it really hard so it was easier to work with.  I used the bottom end of an icing tip to create a circle pattern all over it to represent a scale like texture.  Behind is my three layer crumb coated cake.  

As you can see I was using a small object to keep his house open during this stage.  I am not sure how you get the rice krispy's condensed enough to stay in position at all times.  Certainly something to work on in future projects.

A second layer of brown butter cream created a dirt look to my cake.  I trimmed the bottom in candy stones from the Bulk Barn, and after it sit long enough to form a light crust I used a piece of parchment paper to smooth out the finished product.

I rolled out another piece of fondant and attached it to the inside of  the mouth to create the tongue, and used brown edible dust to shade in along the snout and around the eyes with a new paint brush  to give it more of an authentic look.  I made some tooth shapes out of fondant also and attached them with a dab of butter cream inside the mouth as well.

Finally it was time to assemble it and finish the grass around the head.

I love the grass icing tip, easy to use, and you really can't do it wrong.  I stuck a Kinder Egg in the mouth to prop it open.  I made some eyes from fondant and used a dab of black colouring for the centres.  And here we have the Dinosaur cake that our grandson just adored.  Totally edible, and a huge hit at his party.