Dragon Cake

This is an idea that spawned a while back, and has taken me around 3 months to develop and perfect the whole thing.
Then I just needed the perfect excuse to make it, and lo and behold a good friend of a slightly Gothic inclination happened to have a birthday, how convenient!

So please give a warm welcome to the Dragon Cake, my most ambitious, and prized, creation to date!

Isn't it lovely? Even if I do say so myself! ;)

The cake itself is a large Red Velvet Cake, as this happens to be the recipient's favourite cake. Which was useful, as it also fitted with the red & black colour scheme I'd decided on.

The frosting is plain buttercream, coloured with black food gel. I tried making proper cream cheese frosting, but it seems it doesn't colour very well. After two failed, very runny attempts I gave up for the sake of time, expense, and my sanity!

The wings are piped white chocolate, coated in silver lustre dust. Well, I say "chocolate"... I invested a lot of time and money into trying to temper chocolate to make the wings. I even bought a thermometer. But unfortunately the skill seems somewhat beyond me and resulted in floppy wings every time. So I resorted to Tate & Lyle Chocolate Cake Covering which I have to say was fantastic! Top marks to T&L for that. Next time I'll use dark, however, to better show the silver.

The wrapper I made by hand, using black paper, and a red translucent paper/plastic hybrid stuff I came across in Hobbycraft. I half-inched the sleeping dragon design from a website - whoever you are, thanks! ;) It took me a while with my trusty craft knife to cut them out, I can tell you!

Finally the whole thing was liberally sprinkled with red edible glitter, and popped in a box I made myself from black card. Tied it all up with a big red bow, beautiful!

Here's a nice close up of the wrapper:

And a step by step of the wings:

Draw your design onto a piece of paper, and tape some baking parchment over the top. Use a piping syringe to pipe melted chocolate over the lines you've drawn.

Use a soft brush (a clean eyeshadow brush is ideal) to liberally cover with lustre dust. (left wing is silvered, right is not for comparison - nice and shiny!)

Et voila!
Simply frost the cupcake, poke the wings into the frosting, pop the cake into the wrapper, dust with glitter,  and the creation is complete.

I discovered that the chocolate takes the colouring gels really well, so my next project is a Fairy Cake, using pink chocolate for the wings, covered with the silver again, and probably white icing. I think a pink lady cake would be a good base for this.

If you would like a copy of the wing template, or the sleeping dragon, contact me via the comments and I can provide.

Thanks for looking!
Becka x