How to Make Your Dragon Cake

Carson had big plans for a "Dragon Themed" birthday party this year. I like going with a theme. It makes certain aspects of the party planning easier. So, of course, a dragon themed party needs a dragon cake. We did a little research online together and found some very cool ideas. We took one that we both liked (he liked, and I thought it was feasible to actually make) and ran with it. Here we are with the final creation. So how does one make an incredibly awesome dragon cake such as this? I will tell you.

First you start off with some cake. Carson ordered chocolate. I simply baked 2, 8"round cakes, 1, 6" round cake and several cupcakes (I think I used 3 or 4). I sliced one of the 8" cakes in half, then stood them on the flat end, back to back, to make the body of the dragon. Same procedure for the 6" cake, placed on either side of the body for the hind "legs." The neck and tail were cut from the remaining 8" cake. Then I took cupcakes and cut them for parts of his head, face, tail tip, feet, and I also used chunks of cupcakes to bridge the tail/neck into the body. I just used a little icing to glue him all together. 

 Then, the dragon needed to be crumb iced, so as to make the decorating easier, and also to help smooth his body together.

 Carson also ordered a blue dragon, so I gave him a thin icing of blue to help further shape him and provide me with plenty of color coverage. (At this point I was getting pretty excited at how cute he was looking!)

 Next was the tricky part. I wasn't really sure how to "scale" the dragon, but I used a petal tip to create his layers of scales. At first this was difficult (especially working from some odd angles) and I wasn't so sure I liked it, but Carson and his friend that was over to play assured me that it looked great, so I kept going. Listening to 2 six year olds totally paid off… this time. I left his face un-scaled for a couple of reasons. I thought it would be too much detail on his face, AND I was out of blue frosting, so by default his face is smooth iced.

 Then came the fun details. Hershey kisses make up the spikes along his back. Chocolate chips were used for his toenails, as well as the spikes along his tail. The tail tip was iced and then covered in strawberry flavored fruit roll ups. His "ears" were also fashioned with the fruit roll ups and some skewers and toothpicks. The fire coming from his mouth was also fruit roll ups. His eyes were made of 2 melting chocolate wafers, and I put the pupils on with black gel.

 The final touch were his wings. I made them the day prior to making the cake. Carson picked out red melting chocolate wafers to use for his wings. (Hence, the other red accents.) I drew a pattern for the wings, then formed molds out of aluminum foil. After melting the chocolate, I poured it into the wing molds, reinforcing them with a couple of skewers buried inside. Once the chocolate was set up, I removed the molds and used a vegetable peeler to smooth and shape the wings. We didn't add them to the cake until we made it to the party destination. 

And there you have it- how to make your own dragon cake. Easy peasy, right? Right. I think I'm going to take a quick nap now.