Erupting Volcano Cake!

I am so excited about this one!  My son Nathan said he wanted a dinosaur cake for his birthday, but I couldn't find a mold or recipe/instructions for one that I felt comfortable doing.  Besides the fact, that Nathan kept saying he really just wanted toy dinosaurs ON his cake.  That make me think... what other kind of cake can I make to decorate with dinosaurs - then it hit me - Volcano!  I googled the idea and from there, put this thing together.

I used 3 cake mixes to make a stack of cakes - bunt cake, 8 inch round cake, bowl cake, large cup cakes.  I used thick chocolate pudding mixture to fill in the holes in the middle and iced the entire thing with chocolate icing.  Then chopped up Oreo cookies for the rocks around the volcano, and color coconut green for the grass around the rocks.   The lava at the top is a combination of red sparkle icing and fruit roll ups.  Lastly, I added a few of Nathan's dinosaur figures and toy trees.

The best part is the hole that I left at the top... I filled it with dry ice and a red egg white mixture that overflowed and smoked when we added hot water to it.  We were all so excited about the erupting volcano cake, that we forgot to light candles and sing happy birthday!  Luckily, I had extra cup cakes around for us to take care of that while we were enjoying our volcano cake. :-)

Click here for the eruption video - unfortunately, I was holding my camera phone the wrong way, so you have to turn your head to the side to see it correctly!  Video of the eruption!!!