3-D Dinosaur Birthday Cake Made with Tie-Dye Cake

We gave our four year old a dinosaur birthday party this year.  To make it extra special, I made a 3-D dinosaur birthday cake.  To make sure I had enough cake (we invited my son's entire preschool class), I also made the green dinosaur cupcakes.  They were super easy because I found a dinosaur cupcake kit at Meijer. (Thank you Mom for staying up late with me and putting dinosaur heads and spikes on the cupcakes.)  

We were in Target a couple of days before the party and I had not decided on a cake recipe yet, when I saw these fantastic cake mixes from Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes.  I decided a cake mix sounded great at this point and let my son pick out his favorite.  He chose this really cool tie-dye cake.  I didn't realize at the time that I needed two boxes of this cake mix to make two 9 inch cakes that would be thick enough to create a 3-D dinosaur.  I baked two very skinny cakes and went back to the store and bought 2 cake mixes.  I then used one cake mix for each 9 inch cake pan.  This cake mix worked well for the cake, just make sure and use 2 boxes.  

My husband found the instructions for making a 3-D dinosaur cake years ago and printed them out and we still had them 5 years later.  

I love the way the tie-dye looks.  You start with a body, by cutting one 9 inch cake in half and putting the flat sides together.  Spread a little icing in between to help hold it together and put some icing on your cake board to help it stay in place.  

Make a template following the instructions for making a 3-D dinosaur cake.  I used the bottom of my cake pan as a stencil and cut out a 9-inch circle of wax paper, then penciled in the cutting lines from the guide online.  I then cut out the wax paper pieces and placed them on the cake.  I very carefully cut the pieces and assembled them into a dinosaur shaped cake.  

The head/neck and front legs were the hardest parts to assemble.  I found them difficult to hold in place even with toothpicks so I covered the whole cake in a crumb coat of buttercream frosting and covered the difficult areas with a layer of fondant to help keep them in place.  

I used a large star tip to cover the cake with green and purple icing.  I mixed purple and green icing in my icing decorator to get a nice mottled look.  My favorite decorating tool is a pampered chef icing decorator that I have used for years.  It has large tips and is great for cupcakes and less detailed work like this.  I ran out of green before finishing the cake and when I made a second batch my green came out much darker, but I decided that was ok because it gave some variation in the color.

I colored some fondant gold and purple and cut out simple triangles for the spikes and random shapes for spots.  The eyes are also cut from fondant.  I did not leave my fondant pieces out to dry, I just put them directly on the icing while it was still moist and they held in place nicely.  

How cool is this?  The tie-dye cake was most impressive.  So fun for a kids party.