Welcome to Jurassic Pie. With sixty-five million years in the making, you can't help but fall in lava with it! Truly. You'll have frosting lava all over your kitchen for days, but good gosh was it worth it. If you want to take science to the streets (a cake auction), try out this erupting recipe.

What: Jurassic Pie! (Okay, it's a Volcano cake)
Time: ~ 5 hours
Cost: ~ $40
Science concepts: eh....joy?
Materials:
- 15 cake powdered cake boxes + add-ins (we used Betty Crocker, which needed oil and eggs)
- 12 or so long wooden skewers
- 2 jars chocolate frosting
- 2 jars vanilla frosting
- Food coloring (yellow and red)
- Toy dinosaurs (optional)
- Small plastic bottle (optional)
- Dry Ice (optional)
- A sturdy base
Tools:
- Big ol' knife
- Oven
- Cake pans

You should probably just crank up the Jurassic Park theme song on repeat to get you in the mood. Let's cake!

Step 1: Make Tons of Chocolate Cakes

You're going to be like a mechanical Julia Child in just a second.

Make lots of chocolate cakes from pre-made boxes. Ours required adding 1 cup of oil, an egg, and some water to each one. We found that with greased pans they stuck together well enough to make our volcano.

Stack the cakes on your sturdy base, IHOP-style. We used tin-foil around a giant serving dish.

Support with wood skewers by putting them vertically through all the cakes. It's like the biggest sandwich you'd never want to eat (alone).

Step 2: Sculpt Your Volcano

Michelangelo time! Release the volcano within!

Cut away cake from the top of the stack to start getting a cone-like effect. Make sure to leave plenty around the wooden cakes for support.

Add cake at the base using this nifty method of cutting off the rims of some cakes, and winding them aaround the bottom.

Stuff extra cake at the base, and just start packing it in, so you can get a good ramp-up to your volcano.

Step 3: Pour Choco Base Layer

Who knew microwaving frosting could look so pretty?

Microwave any ol' cheap chocolate frosting for 30 seconds and pour over your cake. It helps to let it cool and then go back and add on subsequent layers. This will give a nice together feeling for your whole volcano. We also found it was amazing how far frosting goes when it's melted. This was all done with only 2 jars of frosting.

Step 4: Erupt With Lava Frosting

It's time to fall in lava!

Mixvanilla frosting with yellow and red food coloring to get an orange-y lava color. Play with colors to get multiple shades if you want, too! This took a little less than 2 jars with two different colors of lava.

Step 5: Insert Bottle Lava Chamber

Time for the lava tube!

Scoopout some chocolate cake from the top to leave room to put in a small plastic container. Make sure to leave container uncapped inside your cake. It is important to scoop out the cake as opposed to squishing your bottle down in to existing, or else your volcano will fall apart.

Insert bottle in to cake, and sink down as far as you can. Fill in with some cake bits and lava on top to partially conceal.

Step 6: Add Dinosaurs!

Yay dinosaurs! Sure there are creatures living together on this volcano that were separated in time for millions of years, but isn't that what imaginative play is all about? Have fun with it!

Add dinos everywhere! You know, pterodactyls on top, brachiosaurs battling each other, stegosaurs falling in to tar pits, the works! We went to Target for ours, but you can find them anywhere.