Happy 10th Birthday Rus/Dry Ice Volcano Cake! (Siobhan)

Rus' 10th Birthday and Dry Ice Volcano Cake

Here is Rus's account of his fantastic birthday:

I ate doughnuts for breakfast and opened a present. After a light school day I went out to Smoke Shack with Dad and got root beer, burgers and fries. We then drove to a sports center where I met my friend Caleb. They had a huge obstacle course where one thing I did was jump through tires. Then I pulled myself up over a wall that was probably over 5 feet tall. Another thing we did was jump on uneven vertical logs. Then we climbed sideways on a wall that had little squares that were tilted in different directions. Another thing we did was climb on really high monkey bars. We also climbed up a ladder into a raised tunnel. Then we dropped around 4 feet to another plank then down to the floor. Then we climbed under low logs then over high logs. After that I went up a very steep ramp then down using a ladder made up of long planks of wood almost a foot apart. Then we had a relay race with the other people there. We did a bear walk for about forty feet and came back to the start. Then we did 30 jumping jacks and 15 burpies. Then we did the crab walk for about forty feet and then came back to the start. Then we did 30 jumping jacks and 15 burpies. Then we climbed under low logs and over high logs and under wire and up the ramp with the rope then down the rope web to the starting line.  Then we went around the whole gym running backwards. All five of us did this in 20 minutes. Dad and I then went down stairs and played football and soccer. Then we stopped to get a drink on the way home. When we got home we brought the volcano cake Siobhan made and put dry ice in a water bottle inside the cake ( dry ice is  -190 Fahrenheit)! We poured water in it so the dry ice would evaporate and make "smoke." Then we hit a piñata full of candy. Then we went inside ate tetrazzini and cake. Then we opened presents. I had a really fun birthday!

~Pinata~

~Dry Ice Volcano Cake~

This year I made Rus a dry ice volcano cake, inspired by this cake tutorial. The awesome thing about this cake is that it involves both cake decorating and science. We all had so much fun with it!

I made mine a little differently; instead of making the cake more like an island, I made ours to be just the volcano.

Rus wanted to learn how to make fondant leaves, so I taught him and Tert how to roll out the fondant and cut/form leaves for the trees. We made these a couple days ahead so they would have plenty of time to harden.

I don't have lots of different sizes of cake pans, so I just used what I had. I trimmed the cakes down to different sizes and then I built them around a plastic water bottle. I just cut an opening in the middle of each layer so that I could stick the water bottle through it. Then I took leftover cake and made a cake pop mixture out of it by mixing it with frosting. I put this cake in between the gaps so that the cake was round like a volcano, and not tiered. 

Here it is! I frosted the cake while it was still frozen and then I sprinkled graham cracker crumbs around it for sand, and we attached our leaves to pretzel sticks with frosting dyed green.

The top of the cake is open, and you can see the water bottle in the cake. The water bottle provides a place to put your dry ice in, so that you can still eat your cake! 

To create this incredible dry ice effect, Dad bought dry ice from New England Dry Ice. We put a piece of dry ice inside the water bottle and poured hot water over it.

I didn't get a great video of it, but this gives you the general idea.

Dry ice is -119 degrees Fahrenheit, and it does 'evaporate' very quickly. Typically dry ice lasts about 12 hours before it is gone! It is best to get it the day you are using it. Dad bought 5 lbs. of it (it's about $1 a pound) and we had a lot of fun playing around with it. Dry ice is not dangerous, as long as you use tongs or gloves when handling it.

Happy 10th Birthday Aidan!