Cool Homemade Light Green Dinosaur Cake

My 3 year old boy decided that this year he wanted a dinosaur cake. I searched high and low for step-by-step instructions on how to make one but nothing was quite right. So I took inspiration from here and there and this Dinosaur Cake was the result. “The Steg” is my first ever attempt at a 3D cake and I am so proud of him. It was such a shame to cut him.

I started with 2 x 22cm round basic chocolate mud cakes. I put the cakes in the freezer for a couple of hours and this made the cutting and carving so much easier.

The first cake was simply cut down the middle and then sandwiched together with a little white chocolate butter cream to form the body.

The 2nd cake was used to create the neck, head, tail and legs. We simply shaped the neck and head using the curve of the cake. Then we did the same for the tail, just finishing with a point. These sections were attached to the body with butter cream and wedges of leftover cake were used to fill any gaps.

Next we carved some legs using leftover cake. I only put legs on the front of the cake as I didn’t have room on the cake board at the back (no-one seemed to notice).

The entire cake was covered in a crumb-coat of white chocolate butter cream and left to set in the fridge overnight.

The next day I again used white chocolate butter cream tinted brown and green to decorate the cake. I used a star tip to pipe the frosting onto the cake. This can be time consuming but the effect looks great. I piped small “spots” onto the cake in brown first and then piped the rest in green. Some sections were too difficult to pipe onto (the section between the inside of the neck and body) so for these the used a butter knife to put the frosting on and just made it a little textured so it would look similar to the piping.

For the eyes I used 2 squares of white chocolate and just carved them to round the edges off and then added a milk choc drop to each “glued” on with a dab of white frosting. For the nostrils I used 2 choc drops pressed together to make a “diamond” shape for each one.

For the spikes, I used wafers and carved out the shape in 2 different sizes. These were dipped in milk chocolate and left to set before just pushing them into the top of the cake.