After some thought I realised I always share the recipes of the cakes I make so why not this one too?

I used my go to chocolate cake recipe (is there any other to use??), filled it with chocolate ganache and iced it with green coloured vanilla buttercream.

I remember decorating the cake in the kitchen and Tom walked in and I started to cry. My parents and brothers were in the living room and I didn't want them to know I was upset so through silent tears I told Tom I couldn't believe our baby was almost one and I was making his first cake (of many I hope). I found myself reflecting on the past year and remembering how I felt at that point last year when labour had just started.

I let myself have a moment then quickly pulled myself together and go on with the decorating the cake. I did have to modify it slightly as I couldn't find the grass nozzle which I think got lost moving house but thankfully I was able to use one of my more obscure nozzles that still gave a bit of a grass effect. Not exactly what I was after but better than nothing.

A dollop of ganache and some Sainsburys micro eggs gave the illusion of dinosaur eggs. I also bought the dino figures off eBay as there was no way I had the time to sit and model a load of sugar dinosaurs.

Thankfully the little man loved it and I managed to stretch it to feed over 20 people woop!

Chocolate Dinosaur Cake

• Preheat your oven to 160C (fan)
• Grease and line two 20cm cake tins
• Pop all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth
• Divide between the two tins and bake for 40mins or until a skewer inserted comes out clean
• Tip onto a wire rack to cool

• Gently heat the cream in the pan until warm but not hot
• Stir in the chocolate until melted and smooth
• Pop in a bowl to cool and once cool cover in cling film and place in the fridge for a few hours to firm up

• Using an electric whisk mix or mixer, beat the icing sugar and butter together until smooth adding a little milk at a time to loosen the buttercream if it’s too thick to spread
• Add the food colouring and beat on a high speed until well combined and fluffy

• Level the 2 cake layers and sandwich with ganache. Make sure to set some aside for the rock pool
• Ice the outside in buttercream and place some in a piping bag to pipe on a grass effect
• Using the micro eggs create a rock pool and fill with some ganache (I gave it a quick zap in the microwave to soften it slightly)
• Scatter the remaining eggs over the cake, pipe on some grass and decorate with dinosaur figures.