Volcano Cake with Dinosaurs

For a barbecue blog, I sure post about cake a lot. Perhaps it's because food is a celebration to me, and many celebrations involve cake. Or perhaps it's because my husband, Eric, has a way with cakes. His aren't delecate cakes, or even pretty cakes, but they are the kind of cake that make you say "No Way!" when you see them, and then "Oh my freakin' god!" when you eat them.

For his first birthday, my son requested, and I quote, "A chocolate volcano cake with red lava coming out, and dinosaurs climbing it with a T-Rex on top." You see, he is under the impression that all kids can simply describe their fantasy cake, and a parent produces it.

Perhaps it is because, for his 4th birthday, his daddy made him a monster-sized monster cake.

Or because he remembers this Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Bacon Frosting.

Or his mommy's grilled birthday cake or her Harvest Cake in celebration of not cleaning the house.

Or the special She-Cake that kind of started it all.

Eric's volcano cake was loved by the kids and hated by the parents at the party. Not that the adults didn't chow down on the double chocolate cake with butter cream frosting. But we heard a few grumbles of the ilk that he'd just upped the cake ante way too far and that any store-bought would now pale considerably. Sorry.

So how did he do it? Pro novelty cake makers would layer up a sheet cake and then carve out the shape. But this requires a certain skill and it wastes a lot of cake. Eric instead thought of the volcano scape like a topographical map. He cut out a shape on restaurant-size parchment paper, then made smaller shapes that layered up. He then baked two sheet pan cakes. Once fully cool, he placed the parchement on the cake and cut out the shapes. Then he layered each with frosting in between and iced the entire cake.

For the lava he used red jello and for the tar pit surrounding the cake, green jello.

This was enough cake to feed about 60 people, so scaling it to a home-sized sheet pan and parchment would be plenty big enough.

Oh dear. I just smeared frosting from cake left-overs on my keyboard. Hazard of the job.

Next post: Back to barbecue, wherein I blog about having to stop myself from whacking a trainee upside the head at the restaurant for CUTTING OFF THE BURNT ENDS OF THE BRISKET AND PUTTING THEM IN THE SCRAP PILE.  I know. I'm still shaking my head. I'll devote at least one post to brisket burnt ends as a way of dealing with it.