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Well, it was my son’s 4th birthday on Saturday so time for another homemade birthday cake!!

Several weeks ago, I stupidly asked him what type of cake he wanted – a dragon cake came the answer.

 Fine, I thought…then I started looking round and discovered that there are no dragons anywhere in any shops!! I thought I’d easily be able to get a dragon shaped cake tin or at least some sort of dragon decoration to put on a plain square cake. But no, nothing!

A couple of days before his birthday, a sense of panic set in before my sister came to the rescue. She casually mentioned on the phone one day that she in fact had a dragon shaped jelly mould. Hurrah, surely that could be of some use…?

 We had a couple of disasters along the way but in the end we cracked it. We went for a square chocolate sponge, with chocolate butter icing in the middle and on the top, with a green dragon poking out of his cave!

dragon_cake

The green dragon was made using vegetarian geletine, condensed milk and green food dye.

The chocolate sponge was made using the usual birthday cake recipe (x2):

Ingredients:
110g/4oz dark 70% cocoa chocolate, broken into pieces
85g/3oz butter (or dairy free spread)
150ml/5fl oz golden syrup
110g/4oz self-raising flour
1 heaped tsp baking powder
50ml/2fl oz milk (or soya milk)
1/2 tsp salt

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C or 350 degrees F and line a 20cm/8 inch baking tin.
2. Place the chocolate, dairy-free spread and golden syrup in a pan. Gently melt together, stirring continuously.
3. In a bowl, add the flour, baking powder and salt.
4. Pour the melted chocolate mixture and milk into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix together until the mixture is smooth.
5. Pour the mixture into the baking tin and place on the middle shelf for 10-15 mins or until the mixture is just set in the middle.
6. Allow to cool and then turn out the cake.

I then used the usual cheat’s decorating method, using bought icing, sprinkles and icing pens!