Help - need to make spectacular dinosaur volcano cake after MILs comments...

[Flibbertybatsgiblets]

At DN's party last month I asked SIL whether she had made the cake herself - reply - 'no its a proper one from a shop'.
I said that I was planning on making a dinosaur volcano cake for DS's 3rd birthday in December.
MIL turns to me with the look of death (I get that quite often from her actually ) and snapped 'THAT'S a bit ambitious' and turned back to carry on ignoring me...

SO I have little plastic dinosaurs, I have deep and shallow 7" cake tins. I have flat cake tins and bread tins. I have realised that coloured icing only comes in a primary colours, and worst of all I don't know what I can use to mould the volcano!!!

HEEEELLLLPPPP please. I have scoured my Australian Womens Weekly birthday cake book but nothing suitable. Any help gratefully received.

Any of these any help?

Bake three cakes, big, smaller and smallest. Sandwich them on top of each other with jam to make a pyramid shape. Make lots and lots of butter icing and cover the cake completely. Make it into the approximate shape of a volcano with a crater at the top. Get food coloring of different colours and mix until you have a greeny brown colour and paint the base of the mountain in this. Then use red and yellow for the top. I would put candy floss in the top of th crater as smoke. HTH.
There are lots of more experienced cake makers on here though who may have a better idea.

Or use choc icing as the mountain and red/orange/yellow for the top.

Do you have a pyrex bowl that you can make a deep dome shaped cake in? you can then cut bits off the side and put them on top to make a volcano shape. Use butter icing, it covers a multitude of sins. You can colour it with cocoa powder and green food colouring with cocoa powder in to make a murky colour. Maybe strawberry laces for lava running down the side and general red/orange/yellow sweets in the crator.

You know in australian womens weekly birthday cake book there is a lot of cakes with barbie sitting in? Well could you buy one of those moulds to make a volcano.

last year ds1 had two dinosaur volcano cakes. my mum (v.talented) baked a madeira cake in a pudding basin, shaped it a bit to make it pointy. The icing was two or three coloured pastes marbled together - green and grey and/or brown. plastic dinosaurs around the base, sparkler candles in the top.

My effort was a chocolate sponge,hacked and piled up with bought chocolate fudge icing, drizzled with red icing from a tube for lava, same dinosaurs and sparkler candles to finish.

Both received a rapturous welcome from the children

The chocolate coloured butter icing sounds good, and green too. So can I just paint the food colouring on to the butter icing? Like with a paintbrush?

(I'm great at making muffins and jam etc but novice at birthday cakes)

Definitely candy floss smoke is a fab idea.

I can see that I am going to have to do some practice cakes before the big day

Some good ones here with tips on how to

bake your cake in a 6inch pudding basin. That way you have your basic hill shape. You can cut out the top, like you would hull a strawberry and when you ice it you can make the edges sharp and pointy.

Thanks Skribble! That one submitted by Stephanie in Hawaii is fab! A lot of the others I've seen seem to be more xmas pud than volcano....

I am going to save that page. I have no idea what a bundt is but can make that shape from 2 deep cake tins sandwiched together then carved.

DP is rolling his eyes and says I am 'on a mission' which is dp speak for he can tell I am about to get VERY obsessed with something!

Steamed puddings are quite good for carving/hollowing - seem to crumble less than baked cake. And a good shape too...