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How to make a dinosaur birthday cake

May 18, 2016 by Meg 16 Comments

Have a dinosaur-loving birthday boy or girl? This dino cake will make them roar for joy!Have a dino-loving birthday boy or girl? This dinosaur world cake will make them roar for joy!

This post includes affiliate links. See my disclosure to learn more.

I love decorating cakes. I’m no professional, mind you, but my mom is super talented and taught me a few things over the years as I watched her decorate cakes for weddings, birthdays, and whatever other occasion people asked her for cakes. She taught me about different kinds of cake tips and introduced me to the world of gel food coloring.

Now that I’m a mom, making fun birthday cakes is one of the things I LOVE to do. It’s therapeutic in a way for me to stand at the counter in my kitchen and sculpt something beautiful (and edible!) for my family.

This year, Little Man had a dinosaur party (read more about it here), and it all started with the cake. A month or so before his birthday (I like to plan ahead), I had him look through Pinterest with me at some different ideas…cars, spaceships, sports…but the winner as soon as he saw it was what he called the “dinosaur world cake“.

As we talked more about his cake, he was really specific about what he wanted. His checklist was as follows:

  • dinosaurs
  • trees and plants (“for the dinosaurs to eat”)
  • a lake (“so the dinosaurs will have water to drink”)
  • a volcano

Okay, I thought, I can work with that.

Here’s what I did to make his “dino world” a reality, and how you can make one, too!

Have a dino-loving birthday boy or girl? This dinosaur world cake will make them roar for joy!

Materials:

  • 9 x 13 cake pan (two if you want to bake both cakes at the same time)
  • Cake decorating bag and tips
  • 2 boxed cake mixes (and their requisite ingredients)
  • Chocolate buttercream frosting
  • Green buttercream frosting
  • Blue buttercream frosting
  • Strawberry jam (or red buttercream frosting)
  • Whoppers, Raisinets, or other chocolate candies of your choice
  • Plastic dinosaurs & trees

What to do:

  1. First, mix up your cake batter. I made one white cake mix and one chocolate, just because Little Man wanted vanilla, but I didn’t want to deal with white crumbs getting in the frosting. You could just do two chocolate cake mixes in the same bowl.
  2. Bake two 9×13 cakes (I just used glass pans, but someday I’m going to invest in nice, straight-edged metal pans so that I don’t have to do as much trimming after they’re baked.) and make sure to reserve batter to bake one cupcake (this will be your volcano). Bake everything according to the package directions.
  3. Once your cakes have baked and cooled completely on wire racks, wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze (make sure you place them on a flat surface to freeze them, otherwise your cake will be lumpy). Freezing your cake makes it much easier to trim, stack, and frost. Plus, it means you can do this step a few days ahead of time and spread out your time investment.
  4. Next, make a base to set your cake on. In this case, I took a leftover Amazon cardboard box, and I covered it with green wrapping paper (just imagine you’re wrapping a present). You can also cover a flat piece of cardboard, or use a large platter.
  5. Make your frosting. I made a batch of this simple chocolate buttercream frosting (minus the espresso powder) from Add a Pinch, and it was just about the perfect amount for frosting the whole cake, including between the layers. I also made a smaller batch of classic white buttercream frosting using this recipe from Betty Crocker. **Note: Make sure your butter is room temperature before mixing your frosting, but NOT melted. I love these tips for softening butter quickly without the microwave.
  6. Color your frosting. Take a small amount of white frosting out and put it in a smaller bowl. Mix blue food coloring in the small bowl, and mix green into your larger batch. **Note: when coloring icing, I prefer gel food coloring (like this set) because you can get more vibrant colors with much less dye. You can buy them on Amazon in packs, or you can buy individual colors at stores like Michael’s and JoAnn’s. Just dip a toothpick in the jar and swirl it around in your icing. Beware: this stuff stains like crazy…it is dye after all.
  7. When you’re ready to assemble your cake (I did mine the morning of the party), take your cakes out of the freezer and unwrap them. Trim the tops so they are mostly flat, and trim the edges to make straight 90 degree angles (I trimmed my bottom layer first and then stacked the top layer on and trimmed it to match). It doesn’t have to be perfect (frosting hides many flaws), but it helps to get the cake into roughly the shape you want the finished product to be.
  8. Place your bottom layer on your cake base and frost away! Frost the top of the bottom layer, then stack your top layer and cover everything. I love using my offset spatula to frost cakes. I just have a little one, and it works fine. Someday maybe I’ll invest in a larger one, too, to really get smooth surfaces. If you don’t have a fancy spatula, you really can just use a knife. It just might not be quite as smooth, but I guarantee your three-year-old won’t care.
  9. Now comes the fun part…decorate your cake!  I just made it up as I went, starting with the “volcano.” I cut off the top of the cupcake (remember your lonely little cupcake?) to give the volcano a flat bottom and placed it upside down on the cake. I dug out a little crater in the top and frosted the whole thing with the leftover chocolate frosting.
    Have a dino-loving birthday boy or girl? This dinosaur world cake will make them roar for joy!Then I did the “lake”. I actually just used my finger to spread blue frosting into the shape I was going for, and then added some “boulders” (Whoppers and Raisinets) around the lake shore. I randomly placed more boulders around the cake, adding bushes and trees as I went until I was satisfied. I placed my dinosaurs on the cake (don’t you love the mom and baby triceratops munching leaves together?) I had intended to do the lava on the volcano out of frosting, too, but I forgot to reserve some to dye red (whoops!). Since all that I had was green and I was NOT about to mix up more frosting (I had already gone through more than a pound of butter), so I used strawberry jam I found in the fridge instead. In the end, I actually like the look and texture of it better than icing, so…happy accident!
  10. Last, I added what’s called a “shell” border around the top and bottom edges in bright green to finish it off. I used a star tip for this (that’s the only tip I used on this cake). If you want a great little video tutorial on how to do this, you can watch one here.Have a dino-loving birthday boy or girl? This dinosaur world cake will make them roar for joy!

Needless to say, my Little Man, loved his dino cake! We put the candles in the volcano, so it “exploded”, which was fun. Now that our dino world is complete, I can start brainstorming for Little Brother’s birthday in a couple months. I’m thinking spaceships…any suggestions?

Have a dino-loving birthday boy or girl? This dinosaur world cake will make them roar for joy!

Have a little dinosaur loving boy or girl? This easy dinosaur cake will have them roaring for joy on their next birthday!

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Filed Under: Food Tagged With: birthday, dino cake, dinosaur, dinosaur birthday

Previous Post: « Dinosaur birthday party: a real mom’s guide
Next Post: Regrets I can live with… »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Emma

    May 18, 2016 at 9:32 am

    I love all the details! I don’t think I would have wanted to let anyone eat this, lol!

    Reply
    • Meg

      May 18, 2016 at 2:04 pm

      I definitely had a moment after he blew out the candles where I was sad to see it get demolished, but that’s what it’s for, after all. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Alyssa

    February 15, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    What a great cake! I wanted to let you know that I am featuring this on a dinosaur party roundup on my site with a link and photo if you don’t mind.

    Reply
  3. Joyce

    March 11, 2017 at 7:39 pm

    We just made this for my grandson’s 6th birthday, he wanted dinosaur land, it turned out great!! Thank you for sharing!!

    Reply
    • Meg

      March 11, 2017 at 9:25 pm

      Joyce, I’m so glad you were able to bring your grandson’s dream to life! Your comment made my day. 🙂

      Reply
      • Jennifer Mann

        July 3, 2018 at 8:54 am

        Meg – I’m going to try this for my 11 year old’s birthday this Thursday. I have a question: I’ve never made frosting from scratch, I’ve always cheated! 🙂 Can I make it today so I can practice? If it turns out, will it be okay to use on Thursday morning? (Today is Tuesday).

        Thanks in advance!

        Reply
        • Meg

          July 4, 2018 at 3:24 pm

          It should be fine, Jennifer. Just keep it in an air-tight container. I usually keep mine in the fridge in a tupperware and then I take it out a few hours earlier so it has time to warm up and soften. If it’s still too tough, scoop it back into a bowl and use an electric mixer to beat it. Add a tiny bit of milk if needed. Good luck!

          Reply
  4. Carissa

    October 30, 2019 at 2:30 am

    Love this been looking at dinosaur cakes to do for my little mans 3rd birthday and def inspired by this one. Love the idea of the cupcake for the volcano thanks so much for sharing.

    Reply
    • Meg

      October 30, 2019 at 3:16 pm

      You’re so welcome, Carissa! I hope he has a fabulous birthday!

      Reply
  5. Kacie Evans

    May 17, 2020 at 10:53 am

    Could I just make one 9×13 cake instead of stacking two? It just wouldn’t be as tall, but otherwise it should be the same, right? I just have two boy’s sharing a party so already am making two cakes, so we just don’t need THAT much cake!

    Reply
    • Meg

      May 19, 2020 at 2:33 pm

      Absolutely! Stacking two cakes looks more substantial (i.e.- bakery-like), but you can certainly make the cake with just one. If you’re making TWO cakes already, I would definitely just do one 9×13 for this cake. Happy birthday to your kiddos!

      Reply
  6. Kacie

    April 10, 2021 at 12:24 pm

    How many days in advance can this be made and how should you store it? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Meg

      April 12, 2021 at 9:15 pm

      You can totally make the cake in advance. I usually bake my cakes in advance and freeze them unfrosted, and then frost them either the day of or the day before the party. If you’re just using a basic buttercream frosting, you can leave the cake on the counter and it will be fine for at least a couple of days. If you can, cover it with a cake plate dome or tent it (carefully) with plastic wrap/foil to keep the frosting from drying out. Hope that helps!

      Reply

Trackbacks

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