We celebrated B’s fourth birthday on Sunday the 13th even though his birthday is really the 16th. J had some deadlines he had to make on the 16th, so we opted to move the celebration up instead of back.

When asked what type of cake he wanted, B was quick to inform me that only a dragon cake would suffice to properly usher him into his fifth year. Dragon cake he wanted, so dragon cake it would be. I made a mental note to prepare for it a few weeks ahead, but nothing really happened until the week before, when on Thursday I realized I really.really needed to get this thing figured out. After some brief moments of panic where I thought “How am I going to sculpt a dragon? Cake? Chocolate? Use a figurine?” I realized that the materials professionals use could be the materials I used; so on Saturday I made the family “Smoody Cake” recipe with some new ways of preparing it (as learned in a new Cooks Illustrated special edition J bought me), frosted it with a very similar frosting to the one my grandma and mom made, but with Cook’s Illustrated recommended changes, and then made a nice gooey batch of Rice Krispy treats to make the dragon. After adding the green dye to the marshmallows, I formed the dragon, using a flexible straw for the form on which the head was made, then left it for Sunday.

Sunday, after church, I threw together some buttercream, placed the dragon on the cake, rolled up some caramels into the moneybags, inserted a shaved candle into the straw’s opening in the dragon’s mouth, put the other candles in the caramel, piped the limbs, wrapped the small birthday toy in a bag big enough (used a pillowcase, actually), and we got on video conference with family for B to blow out the candles, and then on video conference with his Army Uncle to open gifts.

B got a Buzz Lightyear figurine (no pictures as of yet), and a bike (pictures following the cake pictures). All in all, B’s birthday was a huge success, the cake a HUGE hit, and J has informed me that I have set the bar fairly high and shall have to live up to the taste and visual standard of the Fourth Year Dragon Cake.

The right picture shows B’s newly acquired “fake smile for the camera” look. Yaaay.