Dragon birthday cake

From the moment he started talking about wanting a dragon birthday party, I knew I wanted to make a dragon shaped birthday cake. Sure enough there are lots of ideas online for assembling one. I used this as a guide for cutting out and for the different types of candy to use. I also borrowed the idea of having red velvet cake so it looks like you are cutting into a dragon.  As I type that I realize it is pretty gruesome, but like the dragon pinata eating knights, I think the little boys will enjoy it. I used a store bought boxed cake mix though, I don't have time to make it from scratch.
My Little Helper helped me make the cream cheese frosting (I used the Bakerella recipe that I used last year for the filling) and to get just the right shade of blue for his cake.  I doubled the recipe because I figured I'd need to do two coats of frosting. Dragon blue!
 
First I frosted and put together one of the cakes on end.
 
Then I cut out the other cake as per the template.
 
I put it in the freezer for awhile first so it would be easier to cut without crumbling. Then I assembled it. I shaved off a little bit of the head and neck pieces so they would fit together snugly and used those extra bits to provide some height on the forehead.
 
I did a crumb layer and then let it chill in the refrigerator for awhile.
 
The next layer went on much easier, even though I had a lot of critiquing from MLH. He really wanted to help spread the frosting, but I just didn't think it was a good idea.
The guide calls for chocolate covered graham crackers for the scales but I couldn't find them at either Freddy's or TJ's so I bought some diet chocolate cookies that were a hexagonal shape.  MLH  put those scales along the dragons back.
 
I wasn't able to find all the candies but improvised with some blue and white gummy circles for the nose, lime slices for horns, and the orange slices for the claws.  Because I had built up the forehead I didn't need whole marshmallows so I sliced it into fourths and used frosting to affix the chocolate morsel pupils.


We already had bamboo skewers and I couldn't find any solid blue or green fruit roll ups for the wings so we settled for tie dye.
 
I left the plastic on while I cut out the wing scallops because the tip is to wait until the end to add the wings so they don't droop.
 
I also used red fruit rollups for the fire coming out of the dragon's mouth.
Some of the user submissions had dragon eggs or treasure in the crook of the dragon's tail, I wasn't planning on doing that until I happened to see some gold coin chocolates at Freddy's this morning.  I think they look good without being too much. A couple weeks ago we went to The Decorette shop looking for little knights to place near our dragon cake, but came up empty handed.  I did find some blue sprinkles to use for the dragon's scaley skin. I nearly forgot this part! Getting these to stick to the side of the cake was not easy.  This may have been the hardest step. But I think he turned out great!