Dinosaur Rainbow Birthday (Cup)cake

My son gave what seemed to be either an expensive or complicated challenge: he wanted a dinosaur shaped cake for his birthday party. He also wanted a rainbow cake like the one we ordered last year in Lagos, and cupcakes like the one we ordered from a bakeshop in the Philippines. “We can’t it afford it,” my husband said, “you’ll have to make it yourself; you’re creative, you can do it.” NOT! The only thing I can bake is banana bread, and maybe the occasional cupcakes from a Duncan Hines box. This is what I wanted to do:

Here’s what my first attempt looks like, and thank goodness we did a trial run. We got the Wilton primary colors plus brown, and forgetting my elementary Art lesson, I mixed yellow and brown to get orange. I also used too much, as in the entire bottle of gel food coloring. My son took one teeny bite and declared, “it tastes like leaves.”

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So I called for reinforcements. I took care of the cupcakes, using the same food gel colors, but much less and carefully mixing these to get green, purple, and orange as well. I’m not too happy with the colors, but my SIL assured me that they’re right for a boy’s birthday cake. Might as well call it tie-dye cupcake, rather than rainbow cupcake. She and my MIL did the frosting. I’m glad I let them take charge, the frosting was yummy, like melted marshmallow. Our young guests did not care if the cake did not look like a dinosaur, they loved it and had second and third helpings — probably more if their moms did not stop them.