Zesteratops: the Return of the Novelty Dinnersaurus!

Say hello to Zesteratops!

When I launched my blog back in 2013, I made a dinosaur shaped cake for my mother's birthday that year. It's my blog's most popular blog post, racking up over 1000 views so far!

As such, I thought an update of my technique was well overdue. I'm not really a novelty cake person, which you could probably tell from the fact that I've only ever done a 3D dinosaur and a 3D panda cake in the past. However, my attitude towards novelty cakes has been changing: recently my parents decided to foster an eleven year old boy, and having a child in the family again really changes to chemistry of family gatherings! (He actually named this cake: I was originally going to call it Lemonpleurodon)

Mum loves lemon or orange flavour cakes, and the previous dinnersaurus was orange flavoured so this time I went for lemon. I also decided to decorate with buttercream rather than fondant. I absolutely hate working with fondant, but I used it to design the details, like the back sails, tail spikes, eyes, and smiling face.

This project is very time consuming: from the moment I started mixing the cake, to the moment I put on the last tail spike, it took 6 hours. So keep this in mind when you go to make it!

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DIFFICULTY

Requires cake shaping and novelty decorating

TIME

About 6 hours

RECIPE RATING

Needs experience

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INGREDIMENTS

To make a dinosaur cake that will serve 16 to 20 people

One deep 9 inch (23 centimetre) round lemon flavoured cake

Some rolling fondant (sugarpaste) icing, to make decorative details

Food colouring

For the lemon curd

1 medium egg

4 teaspoons (20 millilitres) cornflour

2 large lemons

4 ounces (115 grammes) caster sugar

2 ounces (55 grammes) unsalted butter

Pinch or two of salt

For the icing

5 ounces (140 grammes) unsalted butter

5 ounces (140 grammes) Greek yoghurt

5 ounces (140 grammes) caster sugar

Zest of 1 lemon, see Method

10 ounces (280 grammes) white chocolate

Two pinches of salt

Yellow food colouring

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METHOD

• Before assembly, prepare the icing and the lemon curd. This recipe makes twice as much lemon curd as you need, so you can use the remainder for another project.

To make the lemon curd

• Zest the two lemons, and place the zest of one of the lemons into a measuring jug. Use the zest of the other lemon for the icing later.
• Into the jug, squeeze the two lemons and then top up with water to make 8 fluid ounces (240 millilitres) of liquid.
• In a small saucepan, blend the cornflour, sugar, and egg. Slowly mix in the diluted lemon juice until you have a fully combined mixture.
• Cook the mixture over medium high heat, mixing constantly, until it comes to the boil. Boil for a full minute or so until thickened and it loses some of its opacity.
• Sieve the mixture into a bowl, and then mix in the butter and a pinch of salt. To make the lemon curd taste richer, you might need to add an extra pinch of salt.
• Allow to cool to room temperature before covering with cling film, making sure the film touches the curd, and chilling in the fridge for about an hour.

While the curd is cooling, make the icing

• Follow the instructions in my Simnel cake recipe to make the icing, including the lemon zest in the cooked yoghurt and sugar mixture and omitting the lemon juice. Allow to cool as instructed.
• Tint the icing a pale yellow colour to represent the lemon flavour. Or, you can make it any summery colour you like.

Assembly

• Take the cake, and cut it in half horizontally. Don't cut off the dome: you'll need that to help the shape of the dinosaur.
• Cut each half in half vertically. Now you will have 4 semicircles: two flat ones, and two with domes.
• Take the two domed semicircles and sandwich a flat semicircle between them. Use lemon curd to secure the shapes together.

• Take the remaining flat semicircle and cut it into thirds. You will have two rounded shapes, and one long, rectangular shape. The rectangular shape will be used later for the tail.
• Take the two rounded pieces and sandwich them together with the lemon curd to make the head.

• You now have a body piece, a head piece, and a tail piece. Secure all the elements together as shown using some icing, and then trim the cake to make it more dinosaur shaped.
• After all the cutting and trimming, you'll have roughly 4 ounces (115 grammes) of cake trimmings. Use these and some more lemon curd to make some cake truffle mixture, and use this to make some legs. If you don't have enough cake crumbs to make all four legs, just make two legs and form the remaining legs out of fondant.

• Fix the legs to the body with icing, cover the entire cake in a crumb coat, and then chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes before decorating however you like! I used a petal piping technique to make scales, but you could use fondant if you like.

THIS TIME IN 2017: American Style: Chocolate Fudge Tart
THIS TIME IN 2016: Chocolate Biscuit Cake, a.k.a: Rocky Road
THIS TIME IN 2015: Zingy Lemon Gâteau (Wheat Free)
THIS TIME IN 2013: Experiment: Homemade Sprinkles
There was no blog on this day in 2014.