Make a Fire Breathing Dragon Cake

Want to make a fun, themed birthday cake yourself? With two ordinary 9-inch round cakes, frosting, and a few other easy-to-find sweets, you can create an intricate dragon cake with or without smoking nostrils. Follow these steps to learn how.

Ingredients

  • 2 9-inch (23cm) Round cakes, baked and cooled
  • 6 Cups of frosting, your choice of color (more or less, to taste)
  • 8 Chocolate-covered graham cracker cookies
  • 8 Fruit Gem gummies (or similar)
  • 2 Sunkist fruit slices
  • 2 Blue fruit roll-ups (flat, square kind)
  • 1 Red fruit roll-up (flat, square kind)
  • 1 Yellow fruit roll-up (flat, square kind)
  • 1 Large marshmallow
  • 2 Chocolate chips
  • 2 Hershey's Kisses (optional)
  • 2 Wooden skewers
  • Dry ice, straws and chamber for smoking nostrils (optional)
  • You will want all of your fruit gems, slices, and icing to be all color coordinated -— the example shows orange candies and yellow icing, but you can do whatever colors will match the plates or napkins you will have at the party.

Steps

Making the Cake

  1. Cut the rectangular crackers diagonally with a serrated bread knife, as shown, so that you have two triangular pieces out of each one. You may have to trim the crackers to make them symmetrical.
  2. Slice all of the Fruit Gems in half.
  3. Slice one of the 9-inch round cakes in half. Make sure you've allowed the cakes sufficient time to cool.
  4. Spread frosting on one half of the cake and place the other half on top.
  5. Place the cake onto a cardboard cake board or Make a Mini Foil Rocket-covered cardboard.
  6. Cut up the remaining cake according to the diagram as shown at left. When you are done, it should look like the picture at right. Click images to enlarge.
  7. Assemble the cake pieces according to the picture at right, trimming as necessary. If you make a mistake, don't worry - you can cover it with frosting in the next step. (Scroll down to see instructions for smoking nostrils; if you want to add them, preparations must be made before you frost the cake.)
  8. Frost the rest of the dragon. Use a flat icing tip in your full icing bag on those difficult, moist and crumbly parts. Once the crumbs have been covered up, use your spatula to smooth things over. This method keeps those crumbs from showing up in your icing.
  9. Decorate the dragon. Make the dragon look scaly by using a child's marker cap to imprint the design onto the creamy frosting. Arrange the cookies along his back and tail; place fruit gems and slices on his toes and head. Press the Hershey's Kisses (pointy side in) onto the end of his snout, and cut the marshmallow in half and place the chocolate chips on top.
  10. Make a wing with a skewer and a blue (or other color) fruit roll-up. Trim off a corner of the roll-up to keep them from looking too bulky, and after rolling it up the skewer, trim off the edges bat-wing style.
  11. Repeat for other wing. Make sure not to stick the wings into the cake until right before serving, because they are heavy and will sag over time.
  12. Trim your yellow and red roll-ups for the fire. Cut them into curvy, twisty pieces, and position near mouth.

Adding Smoking Nostrils

  1. Prep the base. In order to ad smoking nostrils to your dragon, you'll first need a base that raises the cake board an inch or two. Cut out the bottom of a cardboard box, or use the bottom of a deep pizza box. Whatever you use, make sure it will accommodate your dry ice chamber, which could be a small, washed-out aspirin container, a small dish with plastic wrap over it, or whatever else you have on-hand. Cover the base in aluminum foil or other thick paper.
  2. Cut out a hole. Before you start assembling the dragon on the cake board, guess as closely as you can about where the dragon's head will be. Using a serrated knife, cut a circle abut the size of a nickel under where you plan to have the dragon's nostrils. Then, put the cake board over the base and, using your first hole as a guide, cut a circle in the base.
  3. Cut out nostril holes in the cake. After you've cut up the cake and have a head piece, use a straw to poke holes for the nostril. If you've allowed your cake to cool sufficiently, punching it with the straw should remove small amounts of cake without damaging the surrounding area. Be careful that you don't punch too close to the edges, and make holes two to three straws wide.
  4. Trim your straws. You'll be using straws to carry vapor from the dry ice chamber up to the dragon nostrils, but you probably won't need them to be full length. Depending on how deep your base is, trim your straws so that they're an appropriate length.
  5. Feed the straws through the nostrils before frosting. Your straws should go through the cake separately, then meet up at the hole in the cake board and the base before going into the dry ice chamber. You don't need the chamber beneath the straws for now.
  6. Right before the party, prepare the dry ice chamber. Put a few walnut-sized pieces of dry ice in your container, as well as some warm water. Seal the opening as much as you can. For instance, if you're using a washed-out pill bottle, stuff the opening with a few ratted-out cotton balls after you put the straws in. If you're using a small dish cover it in plastic wrap or aluminum foil and slice out two small holes for the straws. Remember, you want the majority of the vapor escaping through the straws.
  7. Put the dry ice chamber under the cake. Lift the cake, cake board and base up to slide the dry ice chamber underneath and direct the straws in (get a second person to help you do this). You might find as your lifting that you need to trim the straws a bit to fit them in the chamber, so keep a pair of scissors on hand. Once you've settled the cake over the chamber, your fire-breathing dragon should have smoking nostrils.



A video of a wikiHow reader's wonderful cake using this recipe!

Tips

  • If you use a very thin layer of icing, and then put it in the refrigerator to cool it, you can apply a final layer of icing that will never have any cake crumbs in it.
  • If a child is not fond of fruit roll-ups, red, yellow and orange gummy worms can be used instead.
  • The cake will crumble less if you freeze it after it's cooled but before you cut it.
  • This cake can also be covered in Marshmallow Fondant.
  • Note that if it is not cut exactly as on the diagram, you can always cover up the differences or make it look even larger with the frosting.
  • If your child wants this cake for their party, write the name in frosting on the cake.
  • By varying the decoration, you can even make a dinosaur cake!

Warnings

  • Exercise caution when handling the dry ice.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  • Instructables Article by User:kitchenwench. Source of original information and selected images. Shared with permission.
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