This was done just this year in early January. I must admit I was quite surprised that 5 year old Mikey DIDN'T want a Super Hero. He and David ALWAYS want superheros. So as his December birthday approached, I was expecting to be asked to make a Hulk, or Captain America or some"body", hero or villain. But alas when he said he wanted to do a dinosaur, I thought, hmmm, that shouldn't be too hard. I would best find a dinosaur shaped pan at my local craft store, and started imagining a big long necked short legged dinosaur in purple, reminiscent of "Dino" from "The Flintstones." But as we drove to school (I drive the morning carpool) Mikey described his dinosaur as actually a mean T-Rex and that it had to be green--with purple. I think it came out pretty good.
Rather than use a shaped pan, I decided to hunt for some on-line coloring book pages of a T-Rex and use that for inspiration, if not a traceable printout. I found a couple and enlarged them on my copier to a workable size and then figured out what shapes I could cut out of the baked cake layers to fit together to form the completed dinosaur shape.
I defined the workable size by looking first at my covered cake carrier with a handle which was too narrow, and then my standard window bakery box, and used my cardboard sheet which fit perfectly in the bottom. Then I allowed room (in my mind) for a thick layer of frosting and another 1/8" or so to ensure the cover did not touch the finished cake to figure out the finished size of my reptile and starting size of the cake itself.
I baked 2 chocolate layers (one big and one small) and separately made the mini cupcakes in vanilla for variety. I then cut out the pieces from the coloring paper enlargement and attached them to the cake with toothpicks and freehand saw-cut the tail, the head and the front legs with my favorite serrated bread knife.
I then assembled them on the board and used chocolate frosting to hold them gently together.
After that I made the green tinted buttercream frosting and spread a thin coat over the entire cake and put it in the freezer for an hour. This allowed me to finish the frosting and decorate it without losing any of the dark crumbs into the frosting.
To decorate it, I used a small batch of homemade marshmallow fondant for the eye, teeth and the spines on his back. I used some black ready made cookie icing for the mouth, but wasn't that happy with the product. It ran way too much, and I kept having to collect the black and discard it, with my toothpicks. Another trip to the freezer and that helped with that problem.
I wrote the "Happy Birthday Mikey" in purple dinosaur coloring, made with a small amount of the buttercream that I saved for this purpose.
Rather than pipe on the "toes" in brown, I found some Hershey's kisses I had laying around and put them on the foot. Cute.
Then to incorporate the cupcakes, I decided a dinosaur needed some "bushes" to wander through, and using my leaf tip, piped brown and green frosting onto the cupcakes to make them look like bushes. I might have liked one more color in the scheme, versus the green dinosaur and the green bushes, but couldn't think of another color for the bushes, so that's what I went with.
The cupcakes were transported in the cupcake carrier (24 max) while the dinosaur travelled in the bakery box and made it to the party venue just fine. I assembled the "bushes" all around the dinosaur after taking it out of the bakery box at the party. I was glad I used the large and small cake pans with a double batch of batter, so that the cake was fairly thick, since it wasn't going to be filled. It was cut in just the right number of good size pieces for all the kids and the parents and siblings that were there, plus a handful of seconds. There was only a few cupcakes leftover. That's the way I like it. All gone and nothing to have to bother to wrap or carry home for the birthday family. Happy Birthday Mikey.
