If I could make a suggestion? Most 5 year olds I know don't like coconut, and many are allergic to tree nuts, some don't care for (or aren't allowed to eat) chocolate. So you might be safer making 2 cakes, rather than trying to combine those things on one. If you do that, you can just put one dinosauer on the German Chocolate Cake, and do the scene on the butter-cream (possibly vanilla cake inside) iced one. In the long run, I think you'll have fewer headaches if you make 2 cakes, rather than one. Of course, cupcakes are an even better way to go--easier to serve, less messy for kids to eat--and you can always get those bags of little dinosauers at the dollar store--so you could put one on each cupcake.

I've done some cake decorating but not two frostings. If I was going to do it, I'd do the blue butter cream first and let it set a bit. Probably do any writing on it. Then use a plain tip or a bag without a tip and pipe on the boundary of the coconut pecan frosting. The boundary doesn't have to be straight. It could be a coast line with some wander (or if you consider the blue to be sky, it could have some hills). Then with the boundary established, the rest of the coconut pecan can be spread on.

I'd keep some margin between the intended boundary and with a non-straight line between them, it won't matter if you get a bit over the boundary when you finish putting the coconut pecan frosting on.

You also could consider another alternatives that allow the whole cake to have the coconut pecan frosting - the Happy Birthday writing could be done on a paper banner. You could use wood skewers as posts for the banner and stick them in the cake. That leaves plenty of space for the dinos to frolic. Or you could do the writing on a piece of fondant and lay it on the cake on top of the coconut pecan frosting just before presenting the cake. Or use royal icing letters (you may be able to buy an alphabet set and/or Happy Birthday or you can make a batch of royal icing and do the writing on parchment paper). Put the royal icing letters down shortly before serving (I don't know how long they will hold up on a wetter frosting so I wouldn't do it hours before.)

The cake should be fine 24 hours after baking. The frosting holds the moisture in. I hate the pressure of decorating a cake last minute so I almost always do decorated ones a day in advance.

I would just make a 9 by 12 or double batch in a half sheet pan, of the German chocolate with the pecan rocks and the coconut grass.....and stick the dinosaurs on that. If you wanted to do more....how about some tree trunks made of pocky with palm type leaves of fruit rollups.....and a lake made from blue jello, made in a shallow bowl ( only use 1 1/2 cups of water so it's firmer) and added to the cake at the last minute.
If you want to be even more fanciful without resorting to the pastry bag....how about more cake or another sort of cake, baked in a small bowl topped with a cupcake and frosted with white buttercream snow with red lava icing down the sides. And if you wanted to go even further, there could be a couple of smaller dinosaurs struggling to "escape the lava"....

I have 6 grandsons....need I say more?? LOL!

OK, he requested German chocolate, but did he want coconut pecan icing? He might be referring to the cake only and that could solve your issue, or at least help. You could then get as creative as you want with it. Coconut for grass, even swirl some chocolate into a blue an white icing for thunderclouds. A volcano scene, nuts for rocks, etc.

I don't think I know of many kids who don't like chocolate! LOL And I wouldn't get carried away trying to make special accomodations for everyone. If you eliminate chocolate because one doesn't like it and then the nuts for someone else, what about the eggs for those who can't have eggs and of course flour for celiacs, and butter for lactose intolerant... It gets a bit crazy. I'd only consider that if I knew someone couldn't have it (then have an alternative for him/her). You can't guess everyone's quirks. The cake is for the birthday boy and should be what he likes AFAIC. But I'd double check on the frosting to see if that's what he wants. He might make it easier on you!

Sounds like a fun theme and could be enjoyable making it. Hope everyone has a great time.

Thanks for all the suggestions. This is for a birthday girl, actually (the birthday boy was last month and he wanted Bundt!).

Jello lake! Someone would probably eat it, too! Ewww. Kids do like Jello. We could put Swedish coelacanths in it...

Believe it or not, the guest of honor nixed the idea of a volcano! Who wouldn't want a volcano, right? Remember the La Brea tar pit sundaes that were popular a while back? Obviously we'd have to use mammoths and sabertooth cats instead of dinosaurs (which we have of course) due to my kid's nerdiness...ug. She won't even approve of mixing Cretaceous and Jurassic dinosaurs. A sundae bar would be so much easier!

She definitely wants the frosting...and yet suggested I use peanuts instead of pecans. I guess that would taste okay, just different. I wonder if it would work. She's never actually had the traditional sweet German chocolate cake because I always just put the frosting on a very chocolate cake.

Allergic people will have to tough it out like they did in the old days. When I was a kid, we'd have to take my brother to the ER after just about every social event. He never learned! But having two frostings would at least allow picky kids to eat boring frosting.

But now I've started counting and I'm gonna need a lot of cake and I don't have anything to put a big cake on to transport and serve anyway. So maybe two makes sense. This is going to be a lot of work. I wonder if I can just buy an undecorated giant sheet cake somewhere. Kids don't care if it's any good.

Oh well. At least it's not princesses.

I agree, check with him on the frosting, although to me German Chocolate isn't German Chocolate without that frosting, and the frosting was always the favorite part for my kids.

If you do two icings, I'd do the buttercream first, make a wal/dam of the buttercream where you want it to end and the coconut begin. You can do that with a ziplock bag with the corner cut off, use that to make a line across the cake. I've also seen little candy rocks that you could use as edging for the water.

The cupcake volcano is a good idea, I like that, and i also think that the traditional frosting could look a lot like dirt and rocks, so it could make a suitable "ground" for your dinos.

I do some cake decorating, very amateur, but my favorties were always the kid's cakes, they don't care how messy and the more frosting the better. Demolition sites with bulldozers and race tracks with monster trucks and pastures with horses, we've done them all, LOL.

happy birthday to the birthday boy, he's gonna love it anyway you do it!

Annie

Is there any chance you can find a large flexible dinosaur with an open mouth? If so, I'd make a standard large layered German Choc. cake w/ coconut frosting -- then situate the dinosaur so he's biting a hunk from the top edge of the cake. lol! Maybe not historically accurate but it would be cute. :)

Otherwise, I have a variety of cake baking pans, so I'd try to go with stacked layers of the traditional G.Choc. cake and use different sizes, and maybe even different shapes for each layer (think big rocks). I'd use small dinosaurs at the different cake levels, and I'd see if I could use marshmallows incorporated as more "rocks" in the scene. :O)

Forgot the writing problem: you could skip writing on the coconut frosting... Instead, make a nice printed or hand-drawn "Happy Birthday whoever" sign and hang it between whatever trees you find, or have the dinosaurs holding it between them, or have one dino eating the edge of the sign or something like that. :)

So it's a GIRL!! And to think you might have been able to just bake a cake in a bowl and jam a doll into the top and cover it all with frosting!
maybe you could make a "real tar pit" by melting some licorice whips and pouring into a custard cup to harden and sinking that (un molded of course!) into the cake...Of course you would have imbedded some of the proper creatures into it before it hardened....

For transport of large sheet cakes, you can cover rectangle of cardboard or an upside down sheet pan with foil. Then find a cardboard box that's large enough for the board plus some finger space for taking it in and out and not too deep (or cut it down so it isn't too deep) and put plastic wrap on top if you don't have another box to use as a lid. Or you can set a box on its side and slip the cake on the board/pan into it.

If it has to travel assembled, a volcano might not make it so it's just as well that she nixed the volcano.

Yeah for nerdy girls! I'd have chosen a dino cake over a princess one any day.

Well, I was too late on that, LOL.

Yeah, I'd have taken the dino cake over princesses too, my favotie toys when I was a kid was my pony and and old beat up tractor that my brother and I spent hours removing bolts and screws from, then putting them back on. It never ran, it was for parts, but we had a lot of fun with it, LOL. I never did play with dolls and when all my friends wanted to be Miss America, I wanted to be a Rockette!

So two cakes? Or maybe a cake and some cupcakes, decorated to look like the appropriate prehistoric creature?

Now me? I'd take a pteradactyl and a piece of fishing line so the bird could fly. Either get a tree or a plastic bendy straw and a skewer to anchor it, print a cardboard person and paste the birthday girl's face on the person, glue it to the monster's mouth so it looks like he's eating her. Yeah, that's what I'd do.....(grin)

Hey, I put bud's face in a monster truck window once and he thought it was the neatest thing ever!

Annie

Certainly, you can buy cake layers or sheet cakes unfrosted. Just call your local bakery a day or two ahead of time and order what you need. I've done it many times.

Peanuts? IF there are children coming with peanut allergies, you could kill them, just by having them in the vicinity--they don't have to eat them to be made deathly ill. I'm a former children's cooking class teacher (I taught cooking classes for ages k-6th grade for over 20 year)--and had several students who were allergic, as well as others who had allergic siblings. I COULD NOT HAVE ANY PRODUCTS NEAR THEM THAT INCLUDED PEANUTS--it's not worth the risk--and you'd feel horrible if your daughter's special day was ruined because one of her little friends ended up in the ER...or worse. Please, I'm begging you--unless you know absolutely for sure that none of the invitees have peanut allergies IN THEIR FAMILIES--don't serve peanuts. It really is a dangerous allergy.

Thanks y'all!

I think I'll just pick up some extra cupcakes at the bakery to supplement the cake. Stick on some cheap little dinos if needed. I just can't DO cupcakes myself. They're so fiddly and I'm really not good at applying stuff to cupcakes! (Or cakes, really, which is one reason I like the coconut pecan stuff. It's not possible to be neat!)

Just to follow up, I didn't have time to decorate. I made a large chocolate cake with coconut-pecan frosting decorated with a few dinosaurs and some last minute green glops of bushes. This met with the approval of the honoree.

I also bought a white box cake for backup and used obnoxiously colored buttercream, as a backup.

Y'all were right!! Kids wouldn't touch the chocolate cake! They ate the white cake with only a few exceptions. But there was enough so it worked out okay, and I am the big winner because I have several pounds of really good German chocolate cake in the freezer. MY kids eat it!

I think this summer when we have time, we will have to have a nice backyard get-together for the kids and really try out some of these dinosaur ideas.

Fori, I'm so glad to hear I'm not the only one who agrees to bake/make something and then has to scramble to cobble it together at the last minute! Glad to hear it turned out alright. Isn't it funny what things kids will and won't eat?

This thread reminded me of my dinosaur birthday cake. I think I was about 7, and I wanted chocolate-chocolate-chip cake (chocoholics start young). The baker mom hired (she was intimidated by my dinosaur theme) made a cute pink and brown tyranosaurus rex, but it was white cake with chocolate chips. I was the picky kid not eating my own cake. :p

Here is a link that might be useful: A cake pan that brings back memories