Dragon cake

Jordan draws a lot of dragons, and for his birthday he wanted a dragon cake. When I offered him the chance to draw his own dragon for his own cake, his jaw dropped and he got a faraway look. I cut him out a piece of paper the size of the cake, and had him use fat markers, so that he would draw something I could reproduce in frosting. Here is his selected design. 

Disturbing, isn't it? Dale says it looks a little like the monster in Prometheus. I skipped that movie; I think more of a lamprey-centipede with a mace for a tail.

As usual, I made the cake well in advance and froze it. I learned a new frosting technique from Jess: Instead of slathering frosting all over the thing, which requires a crumb coat, I pipe frosting on in big thick bands with a giant piping tip. I start with the sides.

And then all over the top, first in bands, and then smoothing it with a spreader. This is buttercream; some prefer the shortening kind of frosting because it's better behaved, but we all know it doesn't taste nearly as good. The buttercream behaved quite well for me.

I love to pipe frosting. I find it meditative. I did the white frosting on Saturday night, after Aaron's party, and when I started out I was exhausted, but when I was done, I was refreshed.

The next morning I traced Jordan's dragon with a frosting pen on wax paper. 

Then I pressed the design gently onto the cake, so that the outline stuck to the cake (in reverse). This is pattern transfer, and it's awesome! Went without a hitch.

I made up a batch of dragon-colored frosting. Jordan asked for "a very strong red," and that's hard to achieve with even the best food coloring. I added a little purple to the red, and it came out looking like ... meat. I think it's great. The piping technique is little stars, again learned from Jess.

Here's the final product. It involves one googly eye, many red hots (including the knees!), purchased black frosting for the accents, and fruit leather wings. The 8 is outlined with a gel frosting that I bought in a tube, and filled in with colored sprinkles. To make the yellow-orange flames, I put yellow and orange together in the same piping bag. The candles went into the flame part.

The whole thing was very popular. The kids vied for slices of flame, of 8, and of dragon head. And, most importantly, Jordan was delighted.