Baking Project #1 - Baby Dragon Cupcakes

I'm not sure that I want to kickstart another in-house baking business here in the UK, but I did accept a cupcake project for a baby shower.  The customer wanted vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting and a baby dragon design on top.  I finally concocted a pretty darn good vanilla cupcake recipe with vanilla frosting (see previous post) and found an adorable photo of dragon cupcakes that I attempted to emulate (though clearly more practice is needed):

I baked the vanilla cupcakes (recipe #3 in previous post) and frosted them with the creamy vanilla frosting using a 12" pastry bag with a wilton #12 round tip doing a swirl design:

Using regular buttercream frosting (1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temp, 6-8 cups icing/powdered sugar, 1/2 cup milk, 2 tsp vanilla), I divided the frosting into 3 portions and dyed two portions: 1 green using wilton's green leaf icing color, and 1 yellow using wilton's lemon yellow icing color.  The other portion I kept white. 

With a 12" pastry bag and a wilton #12 round tip, I then piped a dragon body, feet, and face using the green frosting:

Swapping a #5 tip for the #12 tip on the pastry bag with green frosting, I made the dragons ears.

Using the yellow frosting in a 12" pastry bag with a #3 tip, I made two lines on the mouth portion of the dragon, three horns next to the ears, 'spikes' down the dragons back and tail, 3 toes on each of the four feet, and made a triangular/heart shaped piece at the end of the dragon's tail.

Next I used an 8" pastry bag with a #5 tip and piped white dots for the eyes and placed a chocolate chip in the center (really needed mini chocolate chips, but didn't have any!).

Using rolled white fondant, I cut out ovals, then cut the ovals in half, and using a scalloped shaped round cutter, cut out a section of the half oval, then cut the half oval in half to use as a pair of wings (did you catch all that?).  I then brushed the wings with a mixture of wilton's orchid pink pearl dust and almond extract to make them pink and shiny.  I bent a tiny section of the wing so that it would insert into the cupcake.  Alas, the final result:

And here's a look at how all 16 of them turned out:

Not quite as cute as the dragon design I was trying to emulate, but not too shabby for a first attempt.  I need more practice in 'free hand' frosting, but I'm encouraged to do more fun designs!