Dragon Meat Cake with Purple and Gold Scales

I know, disgusting right!? But that’s what you come up with when your soon-to-be 5-year old and 7-year old boys request a Knights and Princesses birthday party, and a dragon has to be slain. Or 2 dragons actually, one for each boy.

After a lot of searching on Pinterest, they finally decided that this dragon meat cake was just the thing. So, I opened a bottle of red wine and started baking.

Red Velvet Cake (aka Dragon Meat Cake)

Ingredients:

350g cake flour
300g sugar
5ml bicarb
5ml cocoa
5ml salt
200ml buttermilk
2 eggs
375ml veggie oil
5ml white spirit vinegar
25ml red food colouring (I used quite a bit more because dragon meat is really dark)
5mml vanilla

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Grease and line 2 small cake tins (12cm diameter)
Sift all the dry ingredients
Using another bowl, mix together the buttermilk, eggs, vinegar, food colouring, and vanilla.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tins and bake for 40 minutes or until cooked.

And this is where the fun began!

The scales are actually pretty easy to achieve. Apply a blob of buttercream icing to the cake, and smear it to the right (if you’re right-handed) with the back of a teaspoon to get the desired effect. Then apply the next blob over the smeared edge, and smear to the right again, and so and so forth. Again and again and again! Once you’ve done the sides, apply the icing to the top in the same way, working your way in a spiral from the outside in.

My sister, Anélle, who is the baker and caker in the family, came over the night before the party and we spent a good hour at the kitchen table scaling the 2 cakes. A final touch of black edible glitter and a lot of gold dust blown onto the scales, our dragons were ready to be slain.