PLEASE NOTE: For some reason Google got rid of the images :( For anyone still interested in viewing it I can't seem to find the originals, but here's one shot of it. If you have any questions about it please head over to my beauty blog (which is still active) and contact me through there: BeautyPopStop.com Enjoy!
So, because the boys are born just over a month from each other we decided to celebrate the boys' birthdays with a joint birthday party with family (doing small separate celebrations on their actual birthdays with just us. Today went well, aside from the fact that both boys and Patrick got sick with some evil respiratory virus:( Unfortunately, that limited the guest list, but Grammy, the aunts and uncles, Nani and Papi were able to come! I had spent the last couple weeks planning the details - anal retentive as usual about everything. My favorite detail of the whole party was the main cake.
I had had several different ideas for a theme or mixed themes, but finally landed on a "How to Train Your Dragon" theme after we went to see it when it came out and the boys loved it. Patrick and I managed to get a bunch of themed stuff from different party supplies stores (it was nutty how difficult it was to find stuff considering the fact that the movie just came out), but I was unable to find a cake mold or blog from someone who had done a 3D "Toothless" cake - the main dragon character in "How to Train Your Dragon". I finally decided I was going to take the mental image I had in my head and simply create it myself. I took my Wilton's Sit-up Bear cake mold and essentially cut and mold it into the silhouette I needed. I managed to do it over the course of several hours. I used a fabulous almond flavored ricotta biscuit recipe that I changed a bit to turn it into a dense cake. It took about 1.5 hrs to cook in the mold, but it did eventually come out of the mold perfectly! After finally get it out I let it sit in the fridge over night to settle a bit. I then cut it and pasted pieces on using the same lemon buttercream frosting I used to cover it after it was done. Once I had the silhouette I needed, I covered it with lemon buttercream so that once cut and the fondant was removed, it would taste like a normal cake. The lemon really compliments the ricotta/almond flavor.
Next came the fun part! The fondant was an adventure. I've never actually worked with fondant like this before so I had no idea what to expect. I used the Wilton's ready-made pure white fondant because I had read it was easy to work with, even compared to homemade fondant. It took three or four rounds of adding and kneading coloring into the fondant to get a pure black, but it was worth it since the end result was lovely. The hardest part was covering the silhouette of the dragon. Unlike a simple round or square cake, my "Toothless" cake had legs, pointy ears, a tail, etc. I finally made it through after several tears and near hair-pulling incidents. Then came the small details like the eyes (yellow and black fondant I shaped myself), toenails, spikes and tail.
Then the wings . . . oh what a difficult detail! It was actually very difficult to not only shape the wings properly, but to attach them to the body and then bend them in a realistic way. I must have tried a million different positions. Finally, I got it. Then I had to duplicate the mirror image for the other side! Also difficult, but I eventually got it. Then, I created rocks using marble-looking fondant I created by mixing in a minimal amount of black food dye until it was swirled, but not thoroughly mixed. I took the rest of the buttercream frosting and dyed it grass-green, then spread it around "Toothless" and made it prick up like grass. All in all I really thought it came out well and the boys definitely liked it. I also made a delicious cheesecake with raspberries - almost all of which was eaten!
The boys had a great time. All in all, both the cake and party were successful!
