The Dragon Cake

Before I start my proper blogging and tutorial thingies (We are still preparing all the proper gears, cameras and whatnots for those!) I thought I'd share a story of how I made this huge red and gold dragon cake for the Chang Kai Shek Alumni Association's 50th anniversary celebration.

Last June 2014, my Aunt commissioned me a cake for the 50th anniversary of their Alumni Association (she is a very important member of the association). The cake has to be extravagant because it will be seen by more or less 500 guest for the event. The theme has to be red with a touch of gold and something Chinese because it is a Chinese school after all. I did a couple of sketches for them and showed a few pictures such as cake with swimming Koi, Chinese boat, Chinese pagoda buildings but nothing was up to their taste until they settled for this. Five layer cake with a Chinese dragon circled around the tiers.

I have never done anything this big and very detailed, but I never back down from a challenge. The easy part was covering the tiers with red fondant (I use marshmallow fondant, homemade). Yep! Even covering the big tiers (biggest is at 16") was easy compared to the dragon. The whole dragon was made out of fondant, rolled into huge logs and attached with many many many bamboo skewers. I cut red fondant circles for the scales and painfully attached them each to the dragon (Must have been hundreds if not thousands of scale in this dragon!).

 Then came the flower details using royal icing brush technique (thanks Youtube University!) and chinese gold coins. The head was made out of rice crispies covered in fondant. Then I had to paint them with gold food color mixed with vodka, I can not remember how many bottles of food paint I consumed for this project!

Oh! and I forgot to mention this cake includes 80 individually boxed cupcakes under the same theme! hahaha! I thought I'd die the night before!

 I had to deliver them in pieces, otherwise they won't fit. We traveled in two cars (I borrowed my Uncle's Toyota Revo because I did not have my own until earlier this year). I had all my tools for last minute retouch and even brought my own ladder (as I could not reach the top!).

Forgive my lack of make-up and baggy eye-bags in this photo due to my lack of sleep! I arranged some of the tiers and attached the dragon head on site. The cake part as well as the cupcake was red velvet with cream cheese buttercream frosting.

The final result was a 45" tall cake, only 3" short to 4 ft! It was painful and grueling work, but the reaction that I got from the people who saw the cake was priceless! I was so ecstatic when people started taking their selfies with the cake. It made every hour spent on this project worth-it!


-Cupcake

The event was held in Century Park Hotel, Manila last October 5, 2014.