How to Train Your Cake to be a Dragon

I have always wanted to make a "how to" blog. I like reading them on other peoples blogs. But... I don't do many things that people would care to know about. As I was making a dragon cake for Alex, I realized that I did learn a bunch of things about cake decorating at a Relief Society long ago. I thought I would share. These are tips from a lady in my last ward. I don't even remember her name.
1. When using a box cake mix- add a fourth cup of flour. It just gives it more stability.
2. Grease your pan, put wax paper in your pan, grease and flour the pan again. Then it is a piece of cake to remove the cake from pan.
3. When putting the batter in the pan, don't put any in the middle of the pan. Just spoon it around the edges. It does flow to the middle but try to have more batter on the edges. As a cake cooks- it makes a rounded top. This tip helps make it flatter (not perfect though).
4. To frost a cake- freeze it first. I make my cakes a day early, take them out of the pans, put plastic wrap around them, then freeze them over night. Then get around to decorating it the next day. This helps so that all the pieces of cake don't come off so easily in the frosting (especially a problem when frosting a cut part of the cake).

OK, here is how to make a dragon cake (I got this from Famiy Fun Magazine).

Make two 9 inch round cakes. Cut one in half.

Put frosting in between it and stand it up like this picture. If you wrap a cookie sheet with aluminum foil then all your pictures will be shiny- so you might want to try a different option.


Cut the second cake up like this. (or something like this)

Lay out all the pieces on your tray kind of like this.

There was another piece of the tail. But it didn't fit on my tray so

it got eaten.

Frost your cake. Make sure you do a better job then I did. I figured it was for four year olds and they would not care too much if it wasn't perfect.

Then decorate your dragon. This has chocolate covered grahams for the scales (square and then cut diagonally), marshmellow eyes with chocolate chips inside them, Hershey's kisses for the nostrils, orange gummy slices for the claws and lime slices for the eye brows. Use skewers and fruit roll ups to make some dragon wings. The magazine recommends not putting the wings in until you are ready to serve because they are heavy. It was a really fun cake, all the kids loved it. Make sure you put the candles coming out of it's mouth so it looks like it is breathing fire!