You're gonna hear me RAWR!

When I think about dinosaurs, what comes to mind first are scenes from Jurassic Park. The wobbling jelly, the rippling cup of water, the T-Rex chasing-the-car and roaring-into-the-side-mirror thing, and, of course, the unforgettable toilet scene.

Generally, I forget all the cute, innocent, and harmless dinosaurs, like Rex from Toy Story, Dino from The Flinstones, Dorothy from The Wiggles, and Big Bird from Sesame Street, who is probably descended from dinosaurs, because what other bird could possibly be bigger than an elephant and taller than a mammoth??

When I think about dinosaur cakes, though, my first thoughts are the cute and harmless cartoon-style dinosaurs! Perhaps because a cartoon dinosaur is much easier to replicate using icing and fondant, or perhaps because I was asked to make one for a little girl, and what 3-year-old would request a realistic dinosaur cake?

Somehow, I imagined that this would be an easy cake to construct... It was relatively straight forward in my head, but we'd had a big day, and I didn't start it until 7pm, so I wanted the easiest way to make a dinosaur, because I was running out of time.

But if I've learned anything recently, it's this:

1. Cake pop mixture can be as big as you want it to be, and can be moulded into any shape you want (like what I did for a rabbit cake)
2. Why limit yourself to just using cake tins to make cakes? (so long as what you use is oven-proof, that is).

So as I was working out how I was going to construct the dinosaur, I lined up a giant mug for the body, and two giant 'cake pops' to make the head and tail:

Because why else would I make a "mug cake" at 8pm:

There comes a point in the evening, though, when you realise that it's actually better to go to bed, rather than carry on exhausted, risking making silly cake mistakes. A fresh mind in the morning after (hopefully) a decent sleep, makes for a much better end result.

Before going to bed, I quickly made some dinosaur spikes, so they would have plenty of time to set.

Having set the alarm for "insanely early, you weird lady", I got started on the cake first thing. I chose to cover the dinosaur in purple buttercream, because I felt it works well with the light green & pink theme that the birthday girl's mum had requested... And, because I had some already made from the cake I'd made the day before ;)

I coloured the fondant to a light green, rolled it out, and covered the cake.

Trimmed around the sides, and added nostrils and 'feet'. The feet were rolls of fondant, as they were small enough to justify not using any cake.

Then came the fun part of adding the spikes! I'm not sure what breed of dinosaur this was meant to represent... A mixture of a short-necked/short-legged brachiosaurus... and a stegosaurus?

Which makes me wonder: Did dinosaurs interbreed?

Eyes and eyebrows were added to (hopefully) give character to this cute little dinosaur:

And as requested - there were matching pink spots all around its body. I probably didn't need to, but I also outlined around the bottom of the dinosaur with royal icing.

The final touches were some purple flowers and birthday wishes!

Happy birthday Riva! :)

What do you call a blind dinosaur?

Do-you-think-he-saurus.

What do you call a blind dinosaur's pet?

Do-you-think-he-saurus Rex.