A Nerd's Bday: Chapter 1 DragonAge

May 8th was my best friend, Becca's 21st birthday. Knowing she is a huge Dragon Age nerd, I decided to create the perfect cake for my friend. I did my research on the game: what each character wore, weapons they carried, and which dragon should rock as the centerpiece. I also researched Alistair's rose speech, and incorporated the rose into the cake, yellow because it's Becca's favorite color. Now because the dragon was the main event, we didn't spend much time on making the people: Oghren (dwarf) with his axe/hammer, an archer, Morrigan (mage) with her staff, and Alistair with his sword. I wanted the cake to be as realistic forest-y as I could possibly make it. So I layered three colors of icing then added foliage and stone. The dragon would be adorning the top, wrapped around the tier, staring the characters in the eyes, except for Alistair, who was at the bottom daydreaming about roses. The dwarf was climbing onto the second tier, trying to reach the action.   

Becca's cake was a chocolate cake, Devil's Food if I recall correctly. Once again I used my home-made buttercream icing to fill and ice the cake. The boulders adorning the bottom border of the cake were marbled fondant, as I did on my mom's cake. The people were made from white modeling chocolate. The dragon was created from a wire frame made by KettlePopped (that in itself took a few hours because he kept breaking it using his awesome man strength!!! *said in simonandmartina's epic booming voice*). The frame was then covered in cereal treats (home-made) with a layer of white modeling chocolate covering it. Then the fun part came. I colored the chocolate different shades of purple (I chose the high dragon in the game, honestly just because purple is my favorite color and it would pop off the greens of the icing). I rolled the chocolate very thin and cut very tiny bits from the log and rolled each piece individually into spheres....
This took hours. I had watched Fred 2 while doing this. After creating these hundreds of tiny chocolate balls, these became the dragon's scales, each individually placed on. This process in itself took from about 10a.m. to about 5p.m. Needless to say, I never want to do a dragon again (j/k! I totally would! =]). While I was working on this, KettlePopped worked on the head, spines, feet, and wings.

We took Becca's cake to O'Charley's where she thought she was meeting two friends for dinner. She had no idea there was a cake, and a surprise party (late decision) waiting for her. It went from three girls to nine friends and family (eleven if you count the awesome waitress and bartender, who loved the cake and said it tasted great). Becca walked in and was shocked; she loved her cake. Yet again, we made a cake no one wanted to cut into.

I have to admit, Becca's cake is my favorite cake we've made so far. I'm very proud of us.

Happy Birthday Becca, and I hope you loved your cake!

Note: This cake took from May 6-8th to make.