400th Post!

Today is my 400th post and I have a special cake for you today! I made this for the boys I nanny. They both have birthdays one week apart so for the last couple years they've shared a birthday party and cake. The oldest turned 4 years old and the youngest turned 2. Last year I made them a Wonder Pets Cake and this year they wanted to go with a dinosaur theme. raaar!

When I'm trying to design a cake, I google what I'm looking for then gather ideas I like or I sketch it out and let my imagination run wild. I was more concerned with the cake and how it tasted than the actual dinosaurs so I used toy dinosaurs the boys already had for decoration. The client requested vanilla buttermilk cake with instant fudge icing (from Sky High Cakes) for one tier and I chose chocolate cake with vanilla cream cheese icing for the other. The vanilla cake had a nice tight crumb and was firm but tender and the chocolate is my favorite go-to recipe. These are both of my favorite frostings too.

I didn't slice the cake so it's a little sloppy, but I wanted you to see the insides.

I made the palm trees by trial and error. I hope I never have to make them again. ha! I made the leaves out of fondant and for the trunks I used pretzel rods. Royal icing held it all together. I made enough leaves for 5 palm trees, many broke so I only had enough to make 4. Then as they dried overnight, I had 2 catastrophes and only 2 survived. I was hoping for 3, but I think it turned out fine. The border around the cake was done with chocolate rocks. They're chocolate chunks that are textured and colored to look like rocks. Fun stuff and the kids loved them!

The bottom tier is fudge frosting and the top tier was tinted with green coloring. It's also the same icing I used to pipe the "grass" border and the lettering on the bottom layer. And lastly the cake board was wrapped in white cake board paper, then I painted it with white royal icing and dusted it with a mixture of graham cracker crumbs and brown sugar to create the appearance of sandy soil. I wanted to wrap the edge of the cake board with ribbon but I didn't have enough to wrap all the sides and I ran out of time to go out and get some. Oh well, I'm pretty sure it would have wound up in the trash anyway :-) Hope you enjoy it and thank you for being here through all 400 posts!

Front of cake

I'm too lazy to type out the recipes, so here are the links:

• Vanilla Buttermilk Cake
• Instant Fudge Frosting
• One Bowl Chocolate Cake
• Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing

Back of cake