Name that cake...

So as I'm trying to gather points for mother of the year, I was away in China while my son turned 13. It's part of a reoccurring theme. I was in Peru when he turned 11. He got even with me last year when he turned 12, though. I lay the blame for this year's current fiasco squarely on my oldest daughter, Amber's, shoulders. You see when my daughters were little either myself or my sister-in-law, Cindy would create a "wilton" cake for them. The kind you bake in shaped pans and then create frosting that you pipe on through an assortment of tips to create hair, grass, roses, you name it. We took some kind of sadistic pride in making the most detailed cakes imagineable, with never a repeat. So when Amber was about 15 she had decided she had grown out of "wilton" cakes and just wanted a "mom" cake.
Thus started the tradition that turned junior mints into spots on lady bugs and oreo crumbs into dirt to be moved by mini backhoes, or gummy worms recreating lava flow down a volcano. Last year, my son didn't care what was on his cake or how it looked as long as I made it. You many remember the angry bird cake of yester-year.

So let me introduce you to this year's birthday cake.

 So sometimes I get distracted with certain "themes". After spending more than 2 weeks in China and learning that my son was born under the sign of the dragon, I thought I could create one for his birthday cake. I know you thought it was a bear, but then maybe you hadn't noticed the bright green scales down the back, the blue and green wings and of course the fire breathing out of the nose. And of course the crossed eyes, because everyone knows all dragons are cross-eyed. It's how come they have all been defeated. That is my story and I'm sticking to it.
As you may recall, I'm not engineer and that's why the angry birds are really crushing the pig, because the pig couldn't support their weight. I had similar malfunctions creating my dragon.

First off, a 13 x 9 pan was not a big enough base. So the dragons tail is more inferred than present.

Then the body halves didn't want to stay together. My skewers are missing in the remodel so I used 2 drinking straws without much success.

This profile proved to look more like a dinosaur, so it was scrapped.

Using the available crevices I created a home for ears and spikes running down the back. In order to bridge the gap each spike rested on a toothpick to hold it in place. The shape of "ding dongs" would have presented better feet and snout, but hostess is no more, so little debbie to the rescue.

Fruit roll-ups were cut to create wings and fire. I frosted the cake with a chocolate home-made butter cream, but it was purposely made a little runny. Anytime you are working with cake edges you suffer the wrath of the crumb. Most bakers would use a "crumb coat" but that would take forethought so I just settled on a thinner frosting that would be assisted by gravity to smooth out the rough edges. And there you have it. A master-piece not quite presentable for pinterest but Jared will enjoy eating it anyway. And just wait til I place thirteen candles in the snout, it will really breathe fire then.