Dragon cake

I made a dragon birthday cake, and since I liked the final result, here are some pictures.

It's a 4-layer chocolate cake, filled with with cream cheese chocolate buttercream and covered with marzipan and chocolate ganache. I used Callebaut chocolate, yum yum. The dragon's molded marzipan, and the words are white chocolate and milk chocolate candy melts (I was tired of tempering chocolate by then). 

Here are some in-progress pictures:

Baby dragon with no head or wings

Putting the head on (supported with dowels and toothpicks), and the front legs

Finished unpainted dragon

Melted Jolly Ranchers for eyes and claws; also did this for lava flames.

Finished dragon! Luckily he fit on the cake. Next time I'll measure first.

I like this view, that shows the wings leaning on each other. By the way, he was inspired by many online pictures, especially this one of a marzipan Smaug. And a picture of our friend's dog really helped, too.

Here's the cake covered with marzipan -- it was my first time doing it, and the marzipan cracked, but I was going to cover it with ganache anyway so I didn't worry much.

I painted the cake with red food coloring (dissolved in butter flavoring), and stuck lava flames in it. 

Note to self: don't use butter flavoring if you're painting tons of stuff. I got a huge headache from the fumes. Next time I'll just use vodka. And don't put the eyes in so early -- they kinda melt. But he really needed eyes.

Cake-making time -- Day 1: Make cake and frosting, cut and stack. Day 2: Make marzipan, cover cake, paint cake. Day 3: Sculpt and paint dragon, melt Jolly Ranchers for accents, assemble cake. Worrying time, planning time, and failed experiments not included.