Fourth Birthday: Dinosaur Cake

My son asked me for a bulldozer cake for his fourth birthday. It was a logical progression from his monkey (first birthday), dump truck (second birthday) and "Mac" the flatbed trailer (third birthday). Considering the fact that I didn't even get his birthday invitations out until a week and a half before his party, I thought that attempting a bulldozer cake was a little too ambitious for me this year. So I decided to veto his choice and make him something that I thought he would like equally as much.

Like many young boys, my eldest likes dinosaurs and his current favourite stuffed animal is the one he named "Spinosaurus". So I figured that I couldn't go wrong making him a cake version of Spinosaurus.

Spinosaurus is chocolate cake with whipped chocolate ganache frosting and a marshmallow fondant coating. His sails are also made from marshmallow fondant that I formed and left out on the counter to dry and harden overnight.

In retrospect, I wish I had taken a few pictures of Spinosaurus to model my cake after. The cake was, of course, made after the kids had gone to bed and my son had already taken the model to sleep with him. So I made him from memory, which resulted in a narrower head and snout, wider eye spacing, missing nostrils, stubbier limbs and a skinnier body than the original. And I knew that the colours weren't going to be perfect because the colouring pastes that I had on hand weren't the exact right colours to begin with.

Luckily, the birthday boy recognized his cake right way and was ecstatic that I had made "SPINOSAURUS!"

That's all the thanks a mom needs for a late, semi-sleepless night of birthday prep.