Chinese Dragon Cake!

 

The Zodiac calendar bestows upon us another Chinese new year!  The 2011 year is the Year of the Rabbit!  But this year I made a Chinese Red Dragon cake constructed out of cupcakes!  The cake is marble cake with cherry buttercream and covered with Red fondant!  I have piped detailing with gold scales on the red dragon.  This Dragon reminds me of the Red Dragon from Avatar the Last Airbender :) 

Here is the Chinese Dragon's fierce stare!

 The dragon is about to lurch!

 Here are the Chinese New Year Cupcakes I made with  fondant Square dusted in super gold and piped with Chinese new year sayings!  " Happy Chinese new year"  and "Gong Xi Fa Cai!" - which is "Good Wealth to you!"   Wishing you a very happy Chinese New year! :)

Year of the Tigger!

It is said to be an optimistic year based on the Lunar Calendar. We will enjoy Chinese New year but also Valentine's Day!  Here is my lovely friend Tigger, the most popular Tiger I know. He makes an awesome cake topper to this festive Chinese New Year cake :)
 

He is adorned on top of a bright chinese red fondant cake!  The cake is decorated with fondant made double happiness symbols,a golden nugget and red firecrackers!

 Here was my inspiration, I saw this Lucky Money envelope and knew right away I had to do Tigger! :D  

This was Tigger before I painted his stripes! He's so helpless..

  Here is Tigger finally sculpted and I just attached his head!   I used black flower stamen for the whiskers!

I created the gold signs with square cookie cutters and then turned them to diamonds and hand piped the chinese characters.  While piping the chinese "happiness" letters I realized that I was much better at piping in Chinese than in English!  LOL :)

The story of why the colors are Gold and red.. check out Wikipedia for the Chinese Mythology that started the Chinese new year tradition.

Each firecracker is a rolled piece of fondant and I mixed t tsp. of gold pearl dust and 1/2 tsp. of lemon extract and painted on the gold strips on the mini firecrackers.

Here I used Edible Gold Dust spray and sprayed the golden nugget!  

I attached the Chinese plagues on the sides of the cake and then placed Tigger and his golden nugget on top  and then added the final decorations by piping red strings for the firecrackers to be connected!  

This is a Square 6" inch with vanilla bean cake and Green tea buttercream!  Wishing you all a wonderful and prosperous year!  Enjoy your lucky money!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!