Dragon Birthday Cake

This is a cake my friend asked me for months before her 30th birthday. She asked me if I could make her a dragon cake. I was very nervous, but I told her I would try my best.

After looking at lots of pictures of dragons, I realized there were many different kinds of dragons. Puff the magic dragon. Chinese New Year dragon. Dungeons and Dragons. How to Tame a Dragon. Lots of ways this cake could go. I asked my friend what kind of dragon, and she preferred the dungeons and dragons version. I told her it was hard to make a decent dragon out of cake, so I suggested making a castle out of cake and a dragon topper. She was happy with that.

The cake itself should be chocolate. I know that she loves color, so I suggested doing rainbow colored buttercream, since chocolate cake isn't terribly colorful. She loved the idea.

I started preparation about a week before her birthday. I baked the cake and made the dragon out of rice krispie treats. Real rice krispies are hard to find in Germany, but chocolate rice is easy to find, so I used that instead. I modelled the body, tail, head in a circular pattern. I didn't even want to try making it sit up, because the structure can be complicated, so the dragon was lying down.

 I then used it to measure the size of the wings.

I used tin foil to make two shaping humps.

 I covered them in parchment paper and used chocolate covered pretzel sticks for structure.

 I then made the wings over the shaper using black candy melts. They were thicker than I thought they would be using candy melts, but I figured it would make them a little more stable.

 Then, the day I was decorating, I took the previous cover off the cake drum and it looked awful underneath.

I covered it in silver crafting paper and covered that in plastic wrap to protect the cake from the paper.

 I made a whole recipe of Swiss meringue buttercream and separated it into six bowls.

 I colored the buttercream all the colors of the rainbow and put them in piping bags. Then I placed the first layer of cake on the cake drum, sticking it on with a bit of buttercream. I had only taken them out of the freezer a few minutes before, so you can see the ice crystals on the chocolate cake.

 I piped the buttercream into a rainbow around the cake. Here, I left the buttercream fairly thick so the color will be more visible when being cut into.

I covered the filling with the second layer of cake.

 I crumb coated the cake with left over buttercream. I initially used the last of the white and purple buttercream.

I also had some left over Swiss meringue buttercream from my last project that I had frozen and decided to use to crumb coat the dragon.

 While that was chilling, I frosted the cake with the rest of my colored buttercream.

 I cut a good sized hunk of white fondant and I added a good amount of black to make a medium gray.

 It took a lot of kneading to combine them. At one point, though, it looked like this. Someday, I'll use the gorgeous marbeling. But it's not the look I'm going for today.

 I kept kneading and finally got the medium gray I wanted.

 I rolled it out and covered the cake with it. No patching necessary!

 I used the small offset spatula to frost the dragon just a touch more.

 My friend's favorite color is orange, so I decided to mix the orange with a bit of black.

 I could tell pretty quickly that it wasn't the color I had hoped for. I wanted dark orange. This was more brown.

 So I added 100g of light yellow fondant.

 And then 50g of red. It was still brown, but at least it's a warm brown, right?

I rolled it out and covered the dragon with the brown fondant.

 I cut the fondant around the odd shape and tucked the stray ends under the edge.

 I used the excess brown fondant to shape hands and feet for the dragon.

 I checked the size against the actual dragon to make sure they weren't too big or too small.

 And I made four of them. Two were slightly larger. They will be the back feet.

 Then I added them to the dragon, smoothing the seems.

 Now back to the castle. I don't want to do more to the dragon until he's on his final resting place, so I set him aside. I rolled out a strip of the leftover gray fondant and used a ruler to cut one very straight line. The other side I used a stylized line cutter to get the line I wanted.

 Then I put it around the top of the cake, which was harder than it looks. It didn't want to stick to the cake, so I had to apply some edible glue around the top of the cake and put on the top strip a little at a time being careful not to stretch it. Then I cut both strips at the same time so they meet flush with the other.

 Then I used dark green fondant and just roughly surrounded the cake with it on the cake board.

My four-year-old was in charge of making the fondant rocks. I think she did a great job. We pressed them into the side of the cake to get them to stick. They surrounded the cake almost all the way around.

 Then I cut some black fondant to be the door and a few rough windows. I could have spent more time on the castle, but this cake was all about the dragon.

 Using my off-set spatula and a flat knife, I carefully removed the dragon from the turntable he's been on his whole life and gently placed him on the cake. I was happy to see that the size is just about perfect.

 I used some excess brown fondant rolled into strips to fill in the gaps where the frosting was visible and cleaned up as best as I could.

 Then I used my sculting tools to give him nostrils, ear holes and a mouth. And I used small balls of black fondant to make eyes. Then I used a round piping tip to give him a scaly texture all over.

 I still wasn't completely happy with the color, but at this point I was pessimistic about getting him back to any semblance of orange, so I decided to paint him red. I mixed red food coloring with a few drops of clear alcohol. I tried to paint more red on the top and slightly less as you go down to give him more depth. It only half worked.

 The final step to the dragon is the wings. I tried to make a guide hole to place them using a cake pop stick. The idea was good. But the stick was hard to get in more than about a centimeter. Did I mention he's made out of rice krispie treats?

 So this happened almost immediately. In the end, I decided wings flat to the body is cool, too. If I ever do it again, I'll use a skewer or stick to prop up the wings and not a pretzel stick.

 Here's a view of the back.

 I covered the bottom of the pretzel stick in black fondant and added a little 30 to the cake, since the number is the reason for the celebration.

I learned a ton making this cake. It was probably my biggest challenge to date and I'm super happy with how it turned out.

Here's a photo of the inside. My friend loved it!