Little Dinosaur Cake Tutorial

I made this little dinosaur smash cake for a former colleague's grandson.  I saw tons of pictures of dinosaur cakes online, but I was looking for something small, cute, and simple.  I stumbled upon this cute little green dino, and it was exactly what I was looking for:

Click here to view the source of this image.

Unfortunately, there was no tutorial available.  The good news is that it looked pretty simple. :-)  

To make the cake, I used one vanilla cake mix.  I poured half into the Wilton Sports Ball Pan and half into a six-inch round pan.  While the cake was baking, I prepared the cake board.

I chose to decorate this cake directly on the cake board, so it needed to be cleanable, which is why I chose the contact paper method to cover the cake board.  I covered the board with a piece of green scrapbook paper, wrapped the edge with yellow electrician's tape, and then covered the board with clear contact paper.

When the cake had finished baking, I leveled, filled, and stacked the layers and then I covered the cake with a coating of vanilla frosting.  I covered the cake with blue fondant, trimmed the excess fondant, and then cleaned up the cake board.

Next, I made each leg (four total) by creating fat L-shaped pieces of fondant, and making creases with the back of a knife.  I used a small frosting tip to make the circular toe impressions.  Then I attached the legs to the body with piping gel.

After I attached the legs, I made the head.  I did this by rolling a piece of fondant into an egg shape in my hands.  I used the ball tool to make indentations for the eyes and a toothpick to make the nostrils and the center of the mouth.  Then I used a knife to cut a curved mouth and V-shaped creases near the eyes.  I used two small pieces of fondant to make eyebrows and I used two little balls of black fondant for the eyes, which I brushed with piping gel to add a shiny finish.  Once I decided on the position of the head, I added a little wedge of fondant in the gap between the head and the body.

The next piece I added was the tail.  It was pretty simple to make, as I'm sure you can tell.  I rolled a piece of fondant in my hands to make the basic shape, and then I cut the base of the tail at an angle so that it would sit flush against the body.  Typically I would use a wooden skewer to help secure the tail, but I didn't want any hard parts in this cake (since it was going to be a one-year-old's smash cake), so I just used piping gel and held the tail in place for about 30 seconds until it seemed secure.

I used orange fondant mixed with tylose powder for the spikes.  I rolled out a fairly thick strip of fondant and cut it into various-sized triangles.  I allowed them to dry for about 30 minutes before attaching them to the cake.  I attached the spikes with piping gel, putting the largest triangles on the middle of the dinosaur's back, working from largest to smallest down the back and tail, and then from the middle of the back to the head, with the smallest triangles on the head and the tip of the tail.  And that's it!  A super simple, cute little dino smash cake with no hard parts that could hurt little hands. :-)