Volcano Birthday Cake

This post first appeared on my other blog in 2015, but since I no longer maintain that one, I'm reposting some of my favorites here!

For his 4^th birthday, Spud wanted an Erupting Volcano Cake with Dinosaurs.  Yep, he was SUPER specific!  I went back and forth for awhile about how exactly I was going to have that volcano erupting.  I kept imagining Junior High Science Fairs with baking soda and vinegar!  The problem, of course being that that would ruin the cake!

Eventually, I decided to use candy melts!  I melted some red and orange candies and spread them out on silicon mats to dry.  Once they were solid again I just stuck them into the top of the volcano!

But that’s not all – I needed this cake to make an impact when it was cut!  I needed magma!

So, I used a batch of Rich Chocolate Cake and spread a bit more than half into a 9x13 inch pan and a bit into a small batter bowl (reserving an additional ¾ cup of batter (or so).  Then, I whipped up a White Almond Sour Cream Cake, split it in three and tinted it yellow, orange, and red.  Then I scooped those colors on top of my chocolate cake, adding the reserved chocolate batter to cover the colors on the volcano part. 

After they were baked and cut, I got these stunning magma layers inside the cake – the kids went nuts over it!