Wesley's Volcano Birthday Cake

My little guy is turning 6 in a couple of days.  My dad had always made our birthday cakes - always different, always unique... and I've tried to do the same for our children.  So, we began searching images of birthday cakes online to get some ideas for Wesley's cake this year.  Let me start by saying, I enjoy baking and cooking, but I am by no means a pro in this department.  So what I've done here I'd have to say anyone can do.  I was pretty happy with the results.

I found a volcano cake posted by a "Wicked Stopmom"... ha ha.. HERE.  I admit, I pretty much tried to replicate what she had created.

Here's how I did it...

Ingredients:
- 1 White Cake, prepared in a 9x13" pan
- 1 Chocolate Cake, prepared in three round pans
-  Chocolate Frosting
-  Vanilla Frosting
-  1-2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs
-  4 Wooden Scewers (to give support to the stacked cakes)
-  10-15 Chocolate Filled Chocolate Cookies
- 1-2 cups White Chocolate Chips or White Candy Melts
-  Food Coloring: Red and Yellow, or Orange
-  Pirouette Wafer Cookies, from Pepperidge Farm (or similar)
-  Parsley Sprigs, or similar, for trees
-  Candles

Directions:

1)  I took a short-cut... I used two box mixes.

One in chocolate, separated in three bowls of different sizes, and one white cake in a regular 9x13" pan.

2)  I transferred the white cake onto a platter and covered with vanilla frosting.

3)  I then stacked the three chocolate cakes, placing chocolate frosting in between each layer.

4)  I placed 4 wooden skewers through the middle of the cakes to help secure them.

5)  I covered the vanilla frosting with graham cracker crumbs.

6)  I used a knife to shave the edges of the chocolate cake to make it a little more volcano-like.

7)  I took a container of chocolate frosting (again, store-bought) and  put it in a bowl with chocolate filled Oreo cookies.  I used my spoon to break up the cookies, and mix them with the frosting.

8)  I covered the volcano with the chocolate frosting mixture.  A little tricky, but I was able to make it work.

9)  The lava - I melted white chocolate chips in the microwave, added some red food coloring, and realized the chocolate got all chunky and dry.  So I added some cream (half and half) and mixed until it was smooth again.

10)  I poured the chocolate lava over top of the volcano and let it drip down the sides.

11)  I added the Pirouette Pepperidge Farm cookies for tree trunks, the dinosaurs, and had to write "Happy Birthday Wes" over top some left over cookies since the frosting would not stick to the graham crackers (oops).  It did the trick.

12)  We stuck some sprigs of parsley into the cookies to make trees.

13)  And of course, we had to add a bunch of candles to the top of our volcano!  I was so excited about the sparkler candles that I found at Wal-Mart, but they were a disappointment.  As you can see... there is little sparkler action happening here.  We also added a #6 candle down below.

 That is that!  Happy Birthday Wesley!!!