So, my son asked for a volcano cake for his sixth birthday. Of course I had to do it. And considering I’m not much of a chef, this cake was surprisingly simple and freaking awesome!

The best thing about this volcano cake is that you don’t have to have all the expensive cake decorating supplies to pull it off. You can make it with supplies that you probably already have at home. Let’s get started!

If you want to skip straight to the step-by-step printable instructions, here they are: FREE PRINTABLE – Volcano Cake

Step #1: Assemble volcano cake supplies

You can get all of your supplies at the grocery store. Here’s a complete list:

Three chocolate cake mixes
Two containers white frosting
One container chocolate frosting
Toy dinosaurs
Toy palm trees
Candles
Food coloring
Paper cup
Dry ice (1-2 lbs)
3-6 Oreo cookies

Supplies needed to make your volcano cake

Step #2: Bake the cakes

Using one of the three cake mixes, bake an entire cake in a 9×13 pan according to the instructions on the package. With the second cake mix, bake it in a 10″ cake pan. Then, with the final cake mix, separate the batter into three different round, oven-safe pans. I used a round casserole dish, a pie plate and a metal bowl. Each round cake needs to be progressively smaller than the 10″ cake.

Step #3: Prep the ingredients

While your cakes are cooking, separate the white frosting into five different bowls. Then add green, red, yellow and blue into four of the bowls. The green frosting should have a little bit more than the rest. Mix in the food coloring. There should be one remaining bowl with just a little bit of white frosting. Then crush up the Oreos.

Step #4: Form the volcano cake

Place the 9×13 cake onto a cookie sheet and then place the 10″ cake onto on half of the 9×13 cake. It’s okay if the sides of the 10″ cake hang over a little bit. Then stack each circular cake (starting from biggest to smallest) on top of each other, spreading on a thin layer of frosting in between each one.

Of course, your volcano cake needs a hole on the top! Take the paper cup place it topside down onto the top of the volcano and carve around it with a knife. Dig out the cake and continue carving until the cup fits in the hole. Then carve around the sides until it looks like a volcano.

Step #5: Decorate your cake

Frost the volcano with chocolate frosting. Then use the blue frosting to make a river and frost the remaining base of the cake with green frosting. If I make this cake again, I will make sure that I add more green food coloring because I felt like the green wasn’t dark enough. You can add in swirls of white frosting into the river if you want. Then complete your volcano cake with palm trees, dinosaurs and crushed Oreos at the base of the volcano.

I was so happy with the way this cake turned out. It turns out that staying up until midnight to finish it was totally worth it when I saw the smiles on my son’s face.

When you put the dry ice in the cup before you light the candles, make sure you use gloves and put plenty of water in the cup for extra mist. Super fun.