Help! Baking part of a birthday cake in a pyrex bowl - receipe?? quantities?

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I'm on a mission to make a special dinosaur cake for DS1. It has to feed about 20-24 small children (and stray parents) at a party, so my plan was to make a large traybake (the Swamp), swoosh chocolate buttercream all over it and then lovingly place the Dinosaur on top. Dinosaur will be made in the same cake as the traybake, covered with sugarpaste and plonked into the chocolate buttercream swamp. (hence doing away with impossibility of modelling long neck, etc, in sugarpaste. This beast will have its snout in the mud. )

I was planning to make the body by using a largeish oval pyrex bowl. I know people do bake in pyrex, but what do I need to be aware of? Bowl is approx. 19cm x 12cm at the base and flares to about 23cm x 18cm at the top, though I won't need to use the full depth of the bowl.

Or would it just be easier to make a standard cylindrical cake in a springform and then carve it to shape?

If I go the pyrex route, the bowl is lined with greaseproof, but can I use Nigella's chocolate birthday cake recipe (the one where you melt the chocolate and condensed milk and butter together) or is it too heavy to bake in a bowl?

(I'm reasonably experienced at making daft-shaped cakes, but I've never baked in pyrex before.)

I wouldn't use the Pyrex. Have you had a look on Pinterest for dinosaur inspiration - I think there are some where they have used a cylindrical cake cut in half then sandwiched together for the body of a lying down dinosaur which looked easy and very effective...

Like dinosaur number 4 on here

www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/dinosaur-cake.html

Or you could try this -

www.wikihow.com/Make-a-3D-Dinosaur-Birthday-Cake

I have never baked in pyrex but I nearly did last month for DD1s birthday so I read up about it.

As far as I can tell you just bake the cake at a lower temp for longer.

Buttering the bowl will be easier than greaseproofing it, but as your cake will be covered in fondant I cant see that any lines caused by the paper would matter!

pyrex bowl cakes work well - no reason to avoid it - and it makes a good tummy for a dino. I have done lots, and there are loads of cakes in various books that I own which use pyrex bowls.

Rather than complete lining, I tend to cut slits in a baking parchment circle so that it sits well in the bottom of the bowl - that and greasing it well are enough to get a cake to turn out IME.

Pyrex bowls tend to be sized by volume - if you can see what yours is (in litres, ideally) then I can look up what it is equivalent to in terms of round tins, IYSWIM.

Thanks everyone! I did consider the half-a-cake-on-end solution and might yet go down that route, but I now just have this idea of a perfect oval shape ready-made. I've lined the bowl by drawing round the base and cutting slits round it, IYSWIM, so it has a neat overlapping lining. Stupidly I didn't check the volume first, so it'll have to come out again.

Now I just have to find someone with a large enough traybake tin...

Have you got a big roasting tin? I made a massive Peppa Pig cake for dd's 2nd birthday and just lined the roasting tin with baking paper.

Ah, good idea.