No Bake Dinosaur Cake

I can't say I wasn't given fair warning that Big Boy wanted a dinosaur cake for his 6th birthday - I think he told me the day of his 5th birthday.  But I didn't start to think about how to make one until 2 days before, which left it too late to get the dinosaur cake mould my sister-in-law in South London offered me.

So instead I googled dinosaur cake and discovered I could adopt a similar principle to my No Bake Train Cake, that is to say buy a cake in the supermarket and 'assemble' a dinosaur.

Ingredients
2 circular cakes, I used Victoria Sponges from the Co-op
1/2 jar of seedless jam
250g icing sugar
Green food dye
Chocolate buttons
Suitable size cake board or tray

1.  Cut one of the cakes into a head and a tail.  I looked at some templates online, and ended up tracing a Ying & Yang shape in the sugar of one of the cakes.  I then held what I decided was the 'head' piece of cut cake over the whole cake and trimmed off any excess from the neck with a sharp knife so it would fit right up against the round 'tummy' cake.  Use some of the offcuts to fill any gaps between the head and the body.

2.  With the point end of the other cut 'tail' piece of cake I again held this over the tummy and trimmed any excess off so the tail would fit right up against the body with some of the offcuts.

3. Cut 'legs' out of the cake off cuts.

4.  Warm half a jar of seedless jam in the microwave until bubbling.  One by one, dip the end of head, tail, and legs that join the body into the jam and use it as glue to hold these pieces in place.  Then drizzle the rest of the jam over the cake so it coats the top and sides, particularly any cut edges of cake as they are very crumbly!  This jam helps the icing stick to the cake and also stops the cake crumbling too much.

5.  Make the fondant icing by mixing the icing sugar with the green food dye and 2-3 tsp water.  Add the water one teaspoon at a time and mix until stiff.  Knead for 3 minutes then roll out to the size of your cake.  I misread the recipe and added 2 tbsp of water and ended up with a gloopy green mixture which I had to apply like sticky polyfilla to my cake.  Drape the icing over the cake and gently encourage it to droop down the sides.  Cut any excess from where the icing folds ie where the legs join the body.

6.  Decorate with chocolate buttons stuck on with jam.  With a sharp knife, fashion some teeth and claws from another chocolate button.