The Dragon Cakes

Lauren was very adamant for most of 2011 that she wanted a dinosaur or dragon cake for her birthday. If you've seen my blog Cakes for Celebration, you'll have realised that she always has a pretty good idea and it's usually a challenge for an amateur like myself.
I had some pretty good ideas of what I wanted to do earlier in the year, but as time passed we booked to go to Center Parcs for her birthday, then the possibility that my parents would join us from Spain arose and I began to realise that any grand plans I had would have to be downscaled.
I did some internet research and I am very grateful to the website Instructables for giving me the template for this cake. I altered it only very slightly as I made the tail and legs differently and as it's American the confectionery they used wasn't available, so my dragon spikes are halved After Eights, the eyes were good old Bertie Basset's and the dragon claws and eye brows are those spongy, banana sweets. I visited a little shop called "SugarCraft" on Scargill Walk in Eastwood, where I found some feathery sticks which made perfect dragon wings, along with some green edible glitter which Lauren had insisted must be on the cake. I couldn't work out what the flames were made of on the website, I tried getting some fruit rolls but they weren't suitable, so in the end I used some very red, Asda's own, writing icing. I used my trusty shelf covered in foil as a cake board and was able to manipulate the dragons shape to fit it. I followed the butter cream recipe I used for the Cofffee Walnut Cake except I omitted the coffee and added a touch of vanilla essence and some green food colouring. I was very disappointed with the colouring. It was very weak, it was Supercook, all natural, but unfortunately this didn't make the lovely green I was aiming for, so I will be looking for some horrible, chemically, probably banned in 5 countries colouring next time I make a coloured icing!
For the sponge I made two 8" sponges, for each sponge 1 weighed 2 large eggs, then weighed out equivalent amounts of caster sugar, self raising flour and butter (spreadable butter or margarine gives me the best results), a few drops of vanilla and a little milk if needed. Popped it in a greased and lined tin and baked for about 25 minutes (until firm to touch, springs back and/or a skewer comes out clean) at GM4/180C. I then used the template to cut the sponge and the butter cream (I made loads) to glue it and cover it before decorating.
At the same time I made a batch of cup cakes using the same sponge recipe. Mum helped out by cutting the tops and piping in the butter cream so they looked like butterfly cakes. I used some banana sweets as dragons tails, then I found some dragons head drawings on google images which we printed, cut out, glued together and stuck onto sticks and then into the cakes to make some very funny little dragon cakes.
The dragon cake was a great success even if it wasn't as sophisticated as previous years. The sponge was lovely, although it dried quickly after the initial cutting, the butter cream is of a consistency that you can get it on quite thinly so it doesn't overpower the taste of the cake and so it follows that the cup cakes tasted pretty good too.....