Dinosaur Birthday Cake

It was birthday time again. This time for my friend Melanie's little boy. It was a dinosaur themed party, using the colors red, lime green, and light blue. I wish I could claim this as an original design, but for this cake I went to google images for inspiration and fell in love with a cake from the Artisan Cake Company in Portland, OR, and I ended up making one similar to it.


As you can tell from my last few cake adventures, I have fallen in love with making and using modeling chocolate. This time I molded my dinosaurs and trees out of it. I feel like a kid playing with Play-doh sometimes. Everytime I work with the stuff my older daughter wants to "play Play-doh" too (although she wants to use mine because she's discovered that the stuff actually tastes good).


I have to admit that my triceratops was my favorite of all the little guys that I made. Too bad they're not still around. I'd want one as a pet :) The sand was made from crushed up graham crackers--pretty good sand, but two days after doing this I saw on Cake Boss that they use brown sugar for sand. Duh--that would have looked so great if I would have thought of that earlier. Next time, I guess.


I know, I know--my little sea creature/loch ness monster dude isn't really a dinosaur, but he was just too cute that I had to include him. You see him eyeing that little cake?! He brought his appetite with him.


I found the trick to the waves was to ice that part of the cake in blue, then put dollups of white icing next to the edge of the blue, and using a small angled cake spatula, pull the white down and into the blue.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Andersen! Here's to another great year.