Dinosaur Cake & Cookies: Here's What I Baked for My Nephew’s First Birthday
Last month, my godchild Thibo celebrated his first birthday, and my sister chose a fun dinosaur theme to mark the occasion 🦖. Being the good auntie that I am, I took on the baking duties to celebrate his first trip around the sun. I decided to try my hand at a big green dinosaur birthday cake and some dino-shaped cookies. This resulted in a (very long) day spent in the kitchen. So let me take you along for the ride with a breakdown of the baking process, a few hiccups, and some tips if you’re planning to recreate something similar.
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The Dino Birthday Cake
The dinosaur cake was the star of the dessert table. I started off by mixing the ingredients of my favorite vanilla birthday cake recipe. After the cakes cooled on the rack, I whipped up the icing and added my go-to green food coloring. Once the cakes had cooled down, the decoration process could begin.
I spent some time on Pinterest for some dino decoration inspiration. Then I grabbed the green fondant, flattened it using a rolling pin, and slowly put it onto the cake. Now, I have a love-hate relationship with fondant. It demands a lot of patience to prevent the fondant from tearing, which isn’t exactly a power I possess. But, nothing a little patching and smoothing can’t fix. So in the end it all came together quite nicely.
Then I cut some nice spikes out of the light green marzipan and also madesome feet and claws. Using a black edible gel pen, I carefully painted on theeyes and a smile. Then used some leftover icing to make the cute little lightgreen spots. For the finishing touch — and to hide some of the tearing of the fondant — I put some frosting all around the cake and sprinkled on some of thecute dinosaur and dino egg edible confetti that I had bought. Et voila, a cuteedible dinosaur was born.
Tip: to make a small smash cake you can put some of the batter into three small muffin cups and make a tiny layer cake with them. This way your little one can enjoy putting their hands in the cake and having their first taste without wasting too much cake.
A Few Burnt Dinos
The cookies were a different story. After burning the first batch (note to self: don’t multitask while baking), I lowered the oven temperature, made sure all the cookies had the same thickness, and kept a closer eye on the next round.
Shaping the cookies turned out to be more tedious than expected— those dinosaurarms and tails tend to break far too easily. Icing them was a bit of a challenge as well.After some trial and error with the consistency, I finally found a method that worked. The cookies ended up looking decent enough for the party, despite the initial hurdles. Making the cookies with lemon sugar icing made them taste refreshingly delicious. They were a big hit for the non-cake eaters or for a little snack when coffee was served.
Click here for my cookie recipe >>
A Bumpy Ride
With the cookies and cake complete, my next challenge was transporting the 30-serving dino cake to the party. As it turned out, my cake box was not tall enough. I ended up putting the cake into the box anyway without closing the lid and holding it on my lap whilst I was in the passenger seat. After a few sharp turns — seriously, it felt like my sister was in the middle of a GTA mission — the box started to tear and one of the spikes fell off. Luckily we arrived at the party without further harming the dinosaur. And the spike miraculously grew back just in time for dessert and coffee time.
The Party & Final Thoughts
Despite a few bumps along the way, the cake and cookies were a hit. The dessert table came together nicely, and the dino theme was well-received. After spending the day in the kitchen, it was good to see everything come together at the party. Next time though, I’ll bake the cake the night before and think through the transport logistics better.
But overall, it was a successful—and tasty—project. Cheers to the birthday boy (please, stop growing up so fast) and to many more days spent off screens, working with my hands—burnt cookies and all.
With love,
Lauke ♥
