Awesome Dragonvale Cake for 10 Year Old Girl

Here’s a cool Dragonvale cake I made for my daughter’s best friend’s 10th birthday party. My daughter’s friends are always ‘ooh’ing and wow’ing’ over the customized theme cakes that I make for my daughter’s birthday parties, so I promised to make one for her best friend this year. I like to create cakes from imagination, based on what is most interesting to the birthday person at that time. And for these girls, both 10 years old, the absolute fascination right now is the Dragonvale game on their iPad. They can’t stop talking about it every time they meet, and so I decided to make a Dragonvale cake. My daughter’s friend’s mum complimented the idea by making it a Dragonvale themed party.

The best part of the Dragonvale cake was really getting the idea together – which dragons will I make, and which habitat will I choose ? Both the girls came up with their favorite dragons, and though these did look formidable, I made up my mind to make them out of sugar paste. I chose the “Plant Habitat”, which had a couple of trees, a few leaf-shaped bushes, some hedges, and flowers, and of course the matching dragons. If you have played Dragonvale you will know that only the matching dragons can stay in a particular habitat. My daughter chose a Sakura dragon which she wanted on the cake, and her friend (the birthday girl) chose the Rose dragon. I looked at a few more pictures, and chose 2 other dragons – the baby versions this time as they were cuter – the Plant dragon and the Flower dragon.

Making the Sugar Paste Dragons:

I started the Dragonvale cake by making the Rose dragon and the Sakura dragon out of sugar paste. The figures were quite easy to make, but the Sakura dragon’s head kept rolling off as it was too heavy for the long neck, so I had to finally insert a toothpick to keep it up. It was important to ensure that the Sakura dragon had big eyes with long eyelashes (Manga cartoon style), and the Rose dragon had a half closed dreamy look in her eyes.

The 2 baby dragons were quite easy to make, and I only had to ensure that they looked really cute. The flower dragon’s head was made using a flower cutter, and I shortened a few of the petals to make it look like the dragon. I outlined it with red paintbrush, and smudged the edges to make it look like a flower petal. The plant dragon was also quite simple, and I gave it a 2 tone effect to look like the one in the game itself.

Making the Trees, Hedges and Dragonvale Cake Base

Then I made the green hedges – rolling out green sugar paste and cutting out long sharp triangles to make it look like long grass. I used normal sugar paste, so I made these wavy, so they could stand on the cake unaided. I also made leaf bushes – made by sticking together 4 sugar paste leaves using a leaf cutter. Also, I kept ready 2 trees – the tree trunk was made of chocolate Flake, and I stuck green tree shaped sugar paste on top.

For the Dragonvale cake, I baked the basic square sponge cake as the base, and covered it with chocolate frosting. I stuck chocolate rocks, which I bought from the supermarket, to the sides to make it look like an island habitat. The top was covered with a green swirly layer of sugar paste. I made 2 square holes in the cake to insert the Flake trees so that they won’t fall down.

Assembling the Dragonvale Cake

I then added the sugar paste dragons that I had made the day before beside the hedges and bushes. I spaced out the dragons and the hedges and trees, so that it did not look too cluttered, and I added a few small colorful flowers, cut out using flower cutters, for the final effect.

The Final Dragonvale Cake

When I presented this cake to the birthday girl, she was so thrilled and excited… but her parents were even more excited that I had baked this cake to make their daughter’s birthday so special.

And the other friends who came to the party could not stop remarking how awesome it looked. When the time came to cut the cake, there was almost a stampede as to who would have which sugar paste model. So, the birthday girl’s mum had to actually make a queue with the best-est friends coming first to choose what they wanted.

The birthday girl of course chose the Rose dragon as she had asked for that one. My daughter cleverly chose a bush rather than her Sakura one, because, as she confided in me later – “mum, the other girl really really wanted that dragon, and I thought I would let her have it, you can always make me another one…”

Making the Sugar Paste Dragons:

Making the Trees, Hedges and Dragonvale Cake Base

Assembling the Dragonvale Cake

The Final Dragonvale Cake

Related cakes: