Mint Chocolate Dragon Cake

This cake was made as an entry to a competition on Mumsnet, which sadly didn't win, but I thought it was too good, not to blog! Miss Kahonie came up with the design for the cake after being inspired by a similar one in Kids' Party Ideas (which used After Eights for the spines), and helped me to make and decorate it.

Before anyone else mentions it, this is the exception to the rule about not eating anything with a face!!!

For the cake
First we made a 3-egg chocolate sponge cake and baked it in the top half of my giant cupcake tin. You could also bake this in a greased and cocoa-dusted heat-proof bowl.

• 150g/6oz butter/spread
• 150g/6oz sugar
• 3 medium eggs
• 150g/6oz SR flour
• 50g/2oz cocoa powder
• ½ tsp baking powder

Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs then stir in the remaining ingredients.

Pour into a well greased tin/bowl which has been sprinkled with a little sieved cocoa.

Bake for around an hour in a pre-heated oven at 150C/140C Fan/Gas 2/300F

Allow to cool in the tin/bowl for about 10 minutes before turning out.

Slice in half once cold.

For the icing
We then crumb-coated and iced the cake with peppermint butter-icing, and added fondant icing details.

• 100g/4oz butter/spread, softened
• 250g/10oz icing sugar
• 1-2 tsp peppermint extract
• green food colouring
• 2-4 tbsp boiling water
• 500g/1lb pack of fondant icing
• 1 bag of chocolate pebbles, giant chocolate buttons or similar

Cream the icing sugar and butter together, adding enough boiling water to make a soft, spreadable icing. Add the flavouring to taste and enough food colouring to get a good, strong, green colour.

Spread a couple of tablespoonfuls of the icing on one half of the cake and sandwich the two halves together. Crumb coat the whole cake (spread thinly with about half of the remaining icing and chill to set). Rough-ice the cake with the remaining butter icing, making peaks in the icing to look a little like dragon scales!

Colour ¾ of a block of fondant icing with food colouring (the gel/paste type is best) and divide into 4 pieces:

• Roll one piece into a long sausage shape for the tail.
• Make 2 flattened circles for the legs.
• Remove a little of the icing from the last piece and make the triangular point for the tail plus an ear and an eyebrow; make a flattened oval for the head from the rest of this piece, making one end of the oval more narrow, for the snout.

Push the legs and head into place onto the butter icing.

Attach the tail to the back of the cake and wrap around the front of the cake over the legs.
Add the ear and eyebrow to the head, sticking down with a little water if needed.

Using the end of a teaspoon or icing nozzle, make semi-circular imprints into the fondant icing to represent more scales.

On white card, draw and cut out: a puff of smoke, 2 wings, an eye and some sharp teeth. Poke these into the icing in the appropriate places! 

Finally, poke the chocolate sweets into the icing along the dragon's back and tail for the spines.

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