Early Birthday Party

We had Aidan's birthday party a week earlier than we would've normally done, but we have a family wedding to travel to the day after Aidan's birthday, so the 21st it was. We were hoping for a sunny day so we could have the party outside, but that was not to be. The forecast was for showers, so we just planned for inside.

Aidan requested a Dinosaur Train birthday cake, since that is his favourite tv show, and he just loves dinosaurs. So, I pulled out my handy train cake pan, made up PW's chocolate sheet cake recipe and got baking. I ended up with enough batter left after filling the train pan to make a 9" round pan. My original plan with that was to make a roundhouse, like in the show, but, despite Pam-ming the heck out of the pan, it stuck and crumbled. I had no idea what to do with it, then, the next day, the episode they ran of the show had the volcano Old Smoky in it. That's what I could do!! I can make it into Old Smoky. I just needed a little marshmallow fondant to wrap around the crumbled pieces of cake to shape it into a volcano, and I would be set. Then I crushed up some cookies to make dirt to bury the "fossil" dinosaur cake decorations I had, made some buttercream  grass to cover up the foil on the baking sheets(I needed one for the train and one for the volcano), and I was all set. I think I scored some major coolness points with my little boy this weekend.

He got a whole pile of stuff, including a Lightening McQueen backpack that, I think, was his absolute favourite gift(I've never seen a child hug a backpack before).