Practice Cake 9
This very special cake was for my son’s 5th birthday and is the most adventurous cake I have attempted. The dinosaur was 23" tall including the hat. It was a chocolate chip sponge, with a chocolate buttercream filling and coated in milk chocolate ganache.

This cake gave me such a steep learning curve. My hubby helped me with building the structure that supported the cake. Who knew he had such skills with a jigsaw.

The head was carved out of Styrofoam. This was the first time I had used it for a cake. Normally I would have used Rice crispy treats for the head, but they can be so heavy & unpredictable. I was really daunted by the Styrofoam, but am now completely in love with the stuff. I doubt I will ever use Rice crispy treats again for moulding.

For the structure & the styrofoam carving I found two tutorials by the Royal Bakery Invaluable.
The Standing Cake Tutorial
The Dino Crate Tutorial
Here is the link to their tutorial shop: https://www.facebook.com/theroyalbakery/app_251458316228

Putting the scales on his skin took me forever. I went through several different impression mats, but nothing gave me the continuous pattern I wanted. After several discussions with cakey friends, I ended up using different sized tubing. This just meant every scale was individually applied!

Apart from the structure and styrofoam, everything on this cake was edible. This includes the rocks! If you want to eat some rocks, here is the link to use: http://hungryhappenings.com/2012/06/my-dad-rocks-edible-fudge-rocks-for.html/

I wish I had a different fern mould. I think this one is just too fancy for this cake, I also wish I had gotten a better picture. Because the cake was so large I wasn’t able to fit it in my photo tent. The camera just didn’t pick the colours up very well.

Overall though I can honestly say I am really pleased (& surprised) by how well it turned out. I was convinced body parts were going to fall off! It was worth the VERY late nights