Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Dragon Birthday Cake

I was just thinking this morning that I haven't made and decorated a cake in a while. Anna's fourth birthday is coming up in two weeks and a 'lub heart cake' (love heart cake) has been requested.

Then I remembered that I took some quick shots of a fun cake I made for my friend Peta's little boy Oliver for his fifth birthday back in October. He requested a dragon, and this is what I came up with (with the invaluable help of Pinterest of course!)


More of a cartoon dragon than a scary fire breather, but I was pretty pleased with the end result. (And Oliver was too!)

I made one standard round cake and one rectangular cake. I used my fall back chocolate cake recipe that never fails. A couple of packet mixes would work perfectly well.

If you look closely, you can see the body of the dragon is the round cake, cut in half then placed on it's side with the rounded edge forming the ridge of the dragon's back. Using the remaining round half, I cut it into a crescent shape and cut a blunt end, butting it up against the body to form the tail.

I then cut the rectangular cake into pieces that would suit as four legs, the head and the neck. When I added each piece, I 'glued' it to the board and to the other cake pieces with icing to keep it sturdy.


Once the dragon's body was assembled, I decorated him - scales first!

I'd love to tell you I'm some hot shot pastry chef in the making, but it would be a lie. Cheaty McCheaterson here bought two tubs of pre-made Vanilla Betty Crocker icing (frosting) in the can from the supermarket, and tinted it green. Tip when tinting icing - for best results, use gel colours. You can buy them from cake decorating stores and online.

For the dragon's 'scales' I used a small star tip (Wilton size 21) in a piping bag, and just squeezed small stars all over the dragon. Once that was done, I tinted a small amount of icing purple and used a round tip (Wilton size 12) to make the purple spikes on his back.


Finally, lolly bananas for claws, halved oreos for eyes, and brown m&ms for eye balls and nostrils. Then some green craft paper wrapped around drinking straws and cut into shape for wings. The drinking straws then insert easily into the cake.

I shall name him 'Norbert'. Yes, after the dragon from that very famous series of books ;)

15 comments:

  1. Well, you're just a little bit fancy aren't you? Thank goodness my kids haven't requested that one. My daughter likes dragons but I'm not showing her this, unless you want to make it again for me? LOL Nice job Ros. Hope you share the 'lub' cake.

    Anne xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. He's gorgeous, oh my GOSH Ros, you decorate cakes as well!! I mean as well as sew - not that I decorate cakes too. We are working our way through the Women's Weekly cakes, but my ideas, cake placement and icing abilities are nowhere near yours. I always have dodgy gaps and crumbly bits of cake everywhere. And that's despite having made the pig twice, and the snail, ladybird AND turtle, which is basically the same cake three ways. ;-)

    Looking forward to seeing Anna's lub heart! x Catherine

    ReplyDelete
  3. He looks great! Ive made this exact cake before as well for Will's first birthday.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Amazing! It is just fantastic, and thanks for the step by step - will file that in my mind for future reference. Gotta love Pinterest for inspiration :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ahh, you're so clever! What a great cake - and lucky birthday boy!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great dragon cake! Funny you post about cakes, I'm in the middle of making 26 pirate cupcakes:/

    ReplyDelete
  7. It looks absolutely amazing! Love it! Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  8. this is absolutely adorable. you did a fantastic job. i remember those fun days. i did cakes like this also. it is so fun to see the faces when they see what we did for them.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Super duper cute! I bet it was the focal point of the party!

    ReplyDelete
  10. This is amazing. You are certainly talented. Dropping by from the Craft-o-maniac blog hop. I posted #234 on cooking a turkey breast in the crockpot.
    http://www.countrifiedhicks.com
    http://www.facebook.com/countrifiedhicks

    ReplyDelete
  11. BTW, I am also your newest follower. Hope you will return the favor!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for your comments - I adore hearing from you! I love to reply personally via email so if your email isn't visible in your profile feel free to leave it in your message so I can get in touch!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...