Volcano Cake

The Mesozoic Era comes alive with this Volcano Cake!  The perfect Birthday Cake for your dinosaur lover!

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I’ve been waiting a long time to share this Volcano Cake with you!  This was made back in October for my little cousin’s birthday party but then I got caught up with sharing so many Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes that I decided to save this fiery cake for the New Year!

Well the New Year has arrived and here it is!

This was such a fun cake to make.  I thought I would take you through a few of the steps of “How this Volcano Cake was made”.

How to make a Volcano Cake for your little Dinosaur Lover! 

This Volcano Birthday Cake was actually for two little boys.  One was turning 4 and the other 2 years old so the requested cake flavor was Cookie Dough!  I used my Cookie Dough Cupcake recipe and made extra batches to make a triple layered 12 inch base as well as two more double layered tiers to create the Volcano topper. The Volcano Cake topper was made up of an 8 inch layer and 6 inch layer.  Then I carved it out to look like a volcano.

I used the pieces that I carved out to make the cone shape to fill in on other parts of the cake. Then a  round circle cutter was used to cut a hole at the top of my Volcano so that the lava would had a place to pool.  It looks a little rough and messy right now but that’s ok.  Mountains and Volcanos are not usually smooth so I like the roughness that we have going on here. The next step was to coat the cake with a chocolate ganache.  It’s a bit of a messy job so you’ll want to make sure your cake is on a rack that’s placed over a cookie sheet to catch the drippings.

Make sure you give your ganache plenty of time to harden before you place it on top of the base cake.  You will also want to make sure that you have adequate support in place on your base cake to hold your volcano.  I’ve tried many different types of support techniques but my favorite are extra large straws.  The type you would use for smoothies.  They are sometimes called Bubble Straws.  I sink them into the frosted base cake and then cut the top of the straw off so that there isn’t too much excess straw poking out.  Make sure you use several that are all cut the same height.

Place your Volcano Cake topper on top of your base cake and get ready to decorate!

I made these little palm trees out of fondant and gumpaste a few days earlier and now they were ready to be added to the cake.

I decided to add a few fondant rocks to add more detail to the cake as well.  I used some gray fondant and mixed in a little bit of black fondant to give more depth to the rocks.

The grass piping was achieved by using the Wilton tip 133 or grass tip.  I also piped some little fossils onto the side of the base cake with some of the extra chocolate ganache.

A Volcano Cake wouldn’t be much fun without some molten lava and dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs are the only part of the cake that’s not edible.  To cut down on time and cost I found a cute inexpensive pack of plastic dinosaurs at the toy store.

The lava is made from white chocolate ganache.  I split the batch in half and tinted some red and some yellow.  The red lava was drizzled on first then I added a bit of the yellow.  For added dimension I used a toothpick to swirl the two colors together a bit.

There’s just one more thing that you need to really bring your Volcano Cake to life.  There’s nothing more beautiful than a Volcanic Eruption so let’s give this Volcano Cake an eruption effect with some Sparkler Candles!  I’m not talking about those trick candles that throw a few sparks here and there.  We need the kind that shoot sparks out!

These Sparkler Candles are perfect when you really want to make a statement!  I order mine through Amazon. I like to order several packs so I have them on hand when there’s a special occasion.  Once they are lit they burn for pretty much the exact amount of time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” so make sure you don’t light them until you’re ready to sing!

Surprise your dinosaur lover this year with a Volcano Cake that comes alive! 

Here are some of the links to products that I used to make this cake.  Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.

Sparkler Candles    Wilton Brown Fondant   Wilton Gumpaste    Leaf Green Food Color Gel

Letter cookie cutters    Cake Boards   16 inch Square Cake Base   Bubble Straws

Wilton Grass piping tip