Since Nonni was going to be up here for her birthday, we wanted to spoil her a little bit. Coincidentally, the boys and I have been watching the hilarious baking “fail” showed called Nailed It and fell in love with the volcano cake.
We thought Nonni would probably love getting such an awesome cake for her birthday, even if it wasn’t the most traditional cake for turning 68… ;)
Despite the failures we saw on the show, we were convinced we could pull off an awesome volcano cake and I think we did! Of course, we didn’t have to deal with the clock like the people on the show did and it actually took us quite a while to finish it, but we had such fun making it!
First step was to practice making our chocolate dinosaurs! Obviously these aren’t chocolate, but I figured practicing with Play-Doh was the closest thing. Plus I was still trying to figure out how to make modeling chocolate since there was none I could find in town.
Thomas was pretty proud of his dino-riffic creation!
Next step was to bake the cakes! We had to have lots of layers to make sure our cake wasn’t a squatty affair. We want some height to our volcano!
Henry wanted to help with cracking the eggs and after he cracked his first egg, he stuck his finger in his mouth! I know it looks like I picked up my camera to take a photo, but I was taking photos on rapid fire of him cracking the egg and he did it before I realized what he was doing. Thankfully he didn’t get himself sick and only looked a little concerned when I started panicking…
Thomas finally realized we were baking without him and came over to help. No idea why he was wearing his life jacket, I don’t even bother to ask anymore…
It’s starting to take shape! The biggest fail the people had on the show was not carving the cake, even though that was definitely in the directions. So we made sure we carved it properly! Which of course meant that there were lots of cake scraps piling up - you can see what happened to most of those scraps if you look to the left of the picture. ;)
Natalie didn’t get to help with the cake, but she seemed unbothered by being left out. She was getting some good tummy time in!
I frosted the cake with the chocolate base and left them in the fridge overnight to set-up a little bit.Then we got to the decorating!
Both the boys got a turn at decorating and you can tell they were pretty excited about being able to help!
Even Matt got in on the excitement! He wanted to make sure that our beach looked accurate enough.
Nonni wanted to taste test the scraps from the hole we carved in the top and Natalie thought she should get some too. Nonni managed to keep her a safe enough distance that no cake ended up in the baby’s mouth. Good job, Nonni!
Finally it was cake time! This volcano cake was about to blow! I would have liked the dry ice to bubble out a little more vigorously, but it was still pretty awesome!
One of Thomas’ dinosaurs. I love that he made them friendly dinosaurs! And my awesome improvisation for the trees goes great with the beach Matt created. What a team effort!
Henry’s dinosaurs were… umm… possibly a little less evolved…?
I love that he gave them such silly expressions though. :)
And a final cut-away to show you the cup of dry ice that was causing the bubbling. Overall I think we did an awesome job on our volcano cake and I can’t wait to try another one of the ridiculous cakes from the show. :)
Happy Birthday Nonni! She said she couldn’t believe she had to wait 68 years to get such an awesome cake, but that it was totally worth the wait. =D