Dinosaur Birthday Cake

What a beautiful Sunday!  In today’s post, I thought I’d share a simple sheet cake I made for a client’s 3-year-old son.  Like every boy at some point, this little guy was all about dinosaurs, and he specifically wanted a Triceratops cake.   I designed the following cake for him….and he apparently loved it so much, that he peeled off the dinosaur and ate the whole thing!  That's what you get when you make your own fondant!

The sky/clouds and grass were hand-painted, the dinosaur is cut out of fondant, and the rocks are made with modeling chocolate (see prior post for more details on modeling chocolate).  I like to carry the design from the cake onto the cake board.  It makes it part of the art, not just the things that holds it.

The letters are piped in royal icing to like look clouds in the sky.  Royal icing is one of a cake decorator’s favorite tools of the trade.  Made just of sugar, meringue powder, and water, it dries quickly and firmly, so it can be used to pipe letters and design that won’t run and to hold sugar art together.  A friend of mine says that if it weren’t for rain, we could build tanks out of it since it dries so hard!

Please share my blog with your friends….and stay tuned for more cakes and recipes!  Let me know if there if there is a specific recipe you’d like to see or if you have any baking or cake decorating questions.  I’d love to hear from you!