The Wilton Megasaurus Disaster.

It sounded so easy, but nothing ever is.

I’d been waiting for the right moment to make use of this, and last night seemed like it. Released in 1999, it’s Wilton’s “MEGASAURUS” cake pan!

I was drawn to it for obvious reasons, but that won’t keep me from naming them anyway. One, it affords me the chance to bake a cake in the shape of a dinosaur. Two, the dinosaur in question looks more like Godzilla. Three, it justifies my deep psychological need to buy a full gallon of green cake frosting.

There were a few problems, though.

I had absolutely none of the needed ingredients. We don’t have the sort of kitchen where cake-making things are in continuous supply. A trip to the supermarket seemed likely… until I read the directions. Wilton’s cake pans are generally easy to work with, but this one is a beast. Between the layering and the extremely particular icing requirements, I was certain that my time, effort and money would be rewarded with a really crappy dinosaur cake.

It was already 10 at night when I drew these conclusions. Had I waited until today, maybe I would’ve been more optimistic. Maybe I would’ve realized that a cake baked in a mass-produced fun-shaped pan could not possibly be that difficult to create.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait. By hook or by crook, whatever was going to happen with me and Megasaurus had to happen last night.

I decided to make a Megasaurus Rice Krispies Treat, instead. That sounded way easier, and besides, I still had a RKT kit leftover from Christmas. (One of the many things I didn’t get to cover during the site’s disastrous holiday hootenanny. Remember those two weeks when I posted nothing but bad MS Paint art? Gotta say, fan mail came to a screeching halt.)

To date, my adventures in blogging have led me to make Rice Krispies Treats at least ten times. It’s no longer exciting, and I kind of go on autopilot.

With my lucidity diminished, I started doing really stupid things. I added several splashes of blue food coloring to the mixture, never once considering why anyone would do that. It’s not even a Megasaurus-appropriate color.

In truth, I just can’t help myself when it comes to food coloring. I’ll dye anything; to hell with the consequences. Studies show that blue food dye is linked to brain tumors in mice, but I’m no mouse.

Then, like a dolt, I poured the Rice Krispies right into the still-scalding pot, when you’re actually supposed to pour the marshmallow goo over the cereal in a bowl that hadn’t just spent twenty minutes frying on the stove. Doing this led to an uneven coating, not to mention several burns on my hands.

The bright side is that these mishaps caused the finished loaf to look like an alien brain. Had I made the cake, I’d only feel like a baker. Doing it this way made me feel like Rick Baker. It’s too bad websites can’t have laugh tracks.

Then, things got worse.

After spraying the Megasaurus pan with enough Pam to kill a giant hornet, I realized that I had nowhere near enough Rice Krispies mix to fill it. Not even close.

Fortunately, I had just enough to make a Megasaurus head. In a pinch, that would have to do. Besides, the head’s the best part. I didn’t need a Rice Krispies Treat based on his hands, or worse, his surrounding foliage. At least, that’s what I told myself as I stood in the kitchen with burned, blue hands. Then I started drooling, because on the off chance that one of my enemies was filming me at the time, I figured I’d put a cherry on top.

Decorating the head was a challenge, but fun. I immediately recognized that the resulting product was not going to look like a dinosaur, let alone the Megasaurus specifically. I persevered, because Kellogg’s gave me a bunch of decorative candy Dots, and who’d want to waste those?

I uh… Well.

I wanted a Megasaurus cake. I ended up with a Rice Krispies Treat shaped like a mutant insect head. Life, they say, is all about managing expectations.

The green Dots near the top are meant to indicate horns. The red ones near the bottom are meant to indicate my total inability to leave well enough alone.

The mouth is the only part I’m really happy with. That’s a killer mouth. Or maybe it’s an underside view of the rare ladybug centipede, which exists only in the same parallel universe as Megasaurus.

I’m trying to keep things in perspective. This was a disaster, but at least it was a disaster worth writing about. And I can always make a true Megasaurus cake later, thus providing me with the chance to get two articles out of a fourteen-year-old Wilton cake pan.

I may be at the bottom, but things are looking up.