Use this simple decorating technique to create the perfect red velvet Dragonscale Cake!
It’s that time of year again… the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and you’re looking forward to the premiere of one of the darkest shows on tv. A show that consistently crushes your soul, your dreams, your will to live, and yet you keep coming back for more. Those familiar with the Game of Thrones series will know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m still not over the whole Oberyn thing — I almost swore off the series at that point. Crushed.
So, in celebration of the season 6 premiere, I’ve collaborated with some fabulous bloggers to bring you some Game of Thrones themed recipes and crafts. Be sure to check out their links at the bottom of this post for some serious showstoppers!!
I didn’t get my act together to make something until this past Tuesday. I wanted to participate, but I was uninspired and couldn’t think of a thing to make. Then I came across this stunner, which was my inspiration for today’s Dragonscale Cake.
Not gonna lie, I got excited pretty quickly. In true Olivia fashion, I left myself almost no time to get my act together to research, plan, and make this. The poor rhubarb recipe I was intending to make got cast aside, as did the rhubarb itself. Hopefully it survives a few more days in the back of my fridge.
I decided to make the cakes and the frosting that same day, since I knew I’d need to space things out to have enough time to decorate (aka maintain some sanity). I wanted to do a red velvet cake for the inside, as I thought it would go well with the blood/dragon theme I was going for. A few quick modifications to the recipe I used for my Coffee & Baileys cake, and the red velvet cake was born. I used about 2 tsp of red color gel to get it to the color I wanted.
For the frosting, I used my Vanilla Buttercream recipe with a couple of modifications. I frosted and crumb coated the cake that day, stuck it in the fridge to set, and spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out techniques and color schemes. I won’t bore you with the details of that, but I eventually decided to go with 3 shades of dark grey with red and green accents.
Except the colors darkened as they set, and you can’t even tell that there are 3 different shades of grey on there (sigh). I knew they would darken up, but I thought you’d still be able to tell a subtle difference. Well, you can’t. So maybe save yourself the time and energy and just do one dark shade.
Oh, and I used an entire bottle of black color gel to get it to that shade. Word to the wise — that dark grey frosting will dye everything. Lips, teeth, you name it. Let’s just say I’m glad I went with the white icing on the inside.
For the red and green, I created a palette of sorts so that the colors would look blended. From there, the technique I used to create each dragonscale was actually really simple to do — pipe a dot of frosting, scrape some color onto your offset spatula (or spoon), then press and smear the dot. Do that about 100 times around the sides of the cake and then do the top. I offset the dots, but you could align them if you prefer.
The trickiest part is getting back to the start, since you can’t really smear those last dots easily. I left them as dots and hid them at the back of the cake. For the top, I just did the best I could so that there wasn’t a lone dot sticking out. Once all the “scales” were in place, I brushed on some gold pearl dust to accent some of them.
I’d say the decorating this Dragonscale cake took me… maybe an hour? But there was some trial and error, and I am a perfectionist, so next time I’m sure it would go quicker.
Despite choosing to make a dragonscale cake, the Daenerys storyline is actually one of my least favourites of the series. I find it mind-numbingly boring (except for her dragons, which are awesome). Ryan says it’s better in the books (I haven’t read them), but blahhh. I am not a fan. I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I would not be upset if she met an untimely demise. Which means she’ll probably stick it out till the end.
Arya’s storyline, on the other hand, is my favourite by far. I’m so intrigued! Plus, let’s be honest here, Jaqen H’ghar is kind of a hottie. It’s that whole mysterious thing he’s got going for him. Tyrion and Sansa are up there as well. Sansa’s becoming a badass and I love it. The whole thing that got me hooked on the series in the first place was the White Walkers, so I’m excited to see more of them. And OMG will the crazy witch lady save Jon Snow?? Pleeeeease! Fingers crossed on that one.
So yeah… if you didn’t already know from my About page, I can hardcore nerd out on some things — Harry Potter, Disney, (certain) video games (hello Witcher 3 expansion, where are you?!?), and apparently Game of Thrones. Admittedly I’m not as hard core on GoT as others are, but I love watching the show.
The Dragonscale Cake turned out perfectly color/flavour/texture-wise. It has a subtle chocolate taste from the cocoa powder, which pairs well with the simple vanilla buttercream. If you’ve got some Game of Thrones parties coming up, this cake would be the perfect way to wow your guests! Oh, and I chronicled the whole decorating process on Snapchat – you can find me there as livforcake.
Be sure to check out the posts from my blogger friends below — some great Game of Thrones themed recipes and crafts!
Notes & tips for this Dragonscale Cake:
- All of the colors will darken over time. So much so that you can’t really tell that I have 3 different shades of grey. You may want to save some time and just do one dark shade.
- You can use grey frosting for the inside of the cake — I think I would probably do that next time.
- Ideally, serve same day, but it will keep quite well in the fridge for 2-3 days.
- Serve at room temperature.
- To help ensure your cake layers bake up nice and flat, see my tips here.
Red Velvet Dragonscale Cake
INGREDIENTS
Red Velvet Cake:
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2-3 tsp super red color gel
- 1/2 tsp white vinegar
- 3/4 cup buttermilk room temperature
Buttercream:
- 6 cups powdered sugar sifted
- 2 cups unsalted butter room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract or flavoring of your choice
- 1 Tbsp heavy whipping cream
- black color gel
- red color gel
- moss green color gel
- gold pearl dust
INSTRUCTIONS
Red Velvet Cake:
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour three 6" cake rounds, line with parchment.
- In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder. Set aside.
- Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth. Add sugar and beat on med-high until pale and fluffy (2-3mins).
- Reduce speed and add eggs one at a time, fully incorporating after each addition. Add vanilla, red color gel, and vinegar.
- Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk, starting and ending with flour (3 additions of flour and 2 of milk). Fully incorporating after each addition. Do not overmix.
- Spread batter evenly into prepared pans. Smooth the top with a spatula.
- Bake for approx. 30mins or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean.
- Place cakes on wire rack to cool for 10mins then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.
Buttercream:
- Prepare a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Whisk butter until creamy. Reduce speed to low and add in icing sugar 1 cup at a time until well blended. Increase speed to med and beat for 3 minutes.
- Add vanilla and 1 Tbsp cream and continue to beat on medium for 1 minute.
- - Reserve 1.5 cups of the white frosting to frost the inside layers and crumb coat the cake.
- - Reserve 1/4 cup of the white frosting to color red.
- - Reserve 1/4 cup of the white frosting to color green.
- For the remaining frosting, add enough color get to get it to the desired shade(s) of dark grey. I ended up using the entire bottle to get 3 different shades. Once it got to a dark enough grey shade, I removed 1/4 of the buttercream, then I added more black and did the same one more time. With the remaining buttercream I added the rest of the color gel for the darkest shade.*
- See tutorial pictures above for decorating technique.
NOTES
*Note: all of the colors will darken over time. So much so that you can't really tell that I have 3 different shades of grey. You may want to save some time and just do one dark shade.
Inspired by this House Targaryen Cake.
Game of Thrones Honey Cake by Sugar & Soul
Game of Thrones Dessert Plate by Simply Made Fun
Game of Thrones Party Parfaits
The nutritional information and metric conversions are calculated automatically. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this data. If this important to you, please verify with your favourite nutrition calculator and/or metric conversion tool.
I just made this cake for my sons 6th birthday! He wanted a dragon cake the whole family loved it! I have made a few of your cakes now and i love that the cake is always super tasty! A lot of times you follow someone’s directions and end up with a beautiful but boring cake!
Also, would a Swiss meringue buttercream work for this cake? My husband and I prefer the taste/texture but I didn’t want to risk it without asking someone who knows what they are talking about!
Hi Martha! Thanks for the great feedback, glad everyone and your son loved it! I think a Swiss Meringue would work great! I also prefer it, to be honest. It is harder to color though, if you were going to do the same design.
Made this recipe (slightly different). I took out the white vinegar.
Added 1 tsp baking soda.
Used 2 TBS cocoa power for a richer/darker cake color.
Used (2)- 6 inch cake pans…. got a ton of “rise” out of the cakes with ZERO overflow batter.
I HALVED the buttercream frosting recipe because I did not need that much for my simple green velvet cake. I added 3 tsp McCormick green food coloring dye.
Tastes amazing. Though I’d love to know how to actually “reduce” the crumb on this little cake. I like “cake crumbs” but not a plethora.
To the Original Poster….. how could I reduce the “cake crumb” in the final result ?
Hi Emmi! I’m not sure what you mean about reducing the cake crumb, can you clarify? I think perhaps your adjustments impacted the structure of the cake.
By reduce the cake crumb, I mean get rid of so much of the crumbs that fall from the cake while slicing or moving or eating or decorating it. The structure of the cake seems fine. Just tons crumbs.
I wonder if adding a bit of neutral oil might help like vegetable oil.
My cake looks and tastes great! I posted a photo on the Pinterest post to this recipe, in case ou wanted to look.
Hmm, I’m not sure :\ The only time my cakes are really crumby is if I’ve overmixed the batter a lot. I’ll see if I can find the photo!
do you still remember the height of this cake pleaseeee? thanks
Hi there! I didn’t measure it but maybe about 6″?
Oh my gosh, this is amazing! I *love* the scales!
Thanks!!
just finished a Harry Potter themed birthday party at work and made a butter beer cake, next will be this dragonscale cake for a game of thrones themed party in May. that said I have a question, why the vinegar? I am a beginner at baking and have not seen it used in cake until now.
Hi Evan! The vinegar is used to react with the cocoa powder — it’s what gives the red velvet cakes their color. I added some color gel though to intensify it.
I made the dragon scale cake for a game of thrones theme party this last Monday at work. It was perfect 🙂 it was well received, thanks for the recipe.
Yay! So glad to hear that 🙂
Hi Olivia,
I would like to make this cake recipe in two 9-in round cake pans. Would you recommend doubling the recipe? What temperature and time would you suggest I bake it at then? Thanks so much! Can’t wait to try it! (My 13 year old niece made your vanilla cake for our family Christmas dinner and it was amazing!).
Hi Jenny! Yes, I would double the recipe, but don’t fill the pans more than 2/3rds or so full. If there is extra batter you can always use it for cupcakes 🙂 Oven temperature should stay the same. Baking time will vary slightly depending on how much batter is in your pans. I would start checking them at 25mins and see how they’re doing. Let me know how it turns out!
Hi Olivia!
You make lovely cakes! I’m going to attempt a GoT cake today for my daughter’s party. This is probably a silly question..But when you make the scales for the top of the cake, do you start in the middle and go out or start from the ends and end in the middle?
Thanks so much Sandra! That is not a silly question, I should have clarified that. I started on the outside and worked my way in. I think either way would probably work, but this one made most sense to me. Let me know how it turns out!
I love making your cakes but this is the first one I haven’t gotten to turn out right. The cake just didn’t rise. I went back over the instructions and I don’t think I missed anything… any ideas as to what may have caused my flat cake 🙁
Hi Casey! So sorry to hear about your cake rising issues… Did it not rise at all? This recipe formula is very similar to all of the ones I use, so if you’ve made my other cakes, this one shouldn’t have been far off 🙁 This one makes a bit less batter though and layers aren’t super thick — maybe like 1.5″ max, but if they were much flatter than that then all I can think of is expired baking powder or possibly overmixing?
I just made this today and have to say I think I did a pretty good job….everyone said it looked just like the photo you have up!!! Thanks for thorough instructions and a simple recipe to follow…it was a major hit at the premiere party I went to!!!
Ohh yay! So happy to hear that!! Send me a pic, I’d love to see it 😀
Just a tip in case anyone else, like me, got over ambitious and tried make this but ended up with a Pinterest fail:
Cream cheese frosting will not work to make the scales, as apparently cream cheese frosting is less stiff than buttercream, and won’t hold shapes/do well being piped! I assumed this cake used buttercream as a matter of preference, and I just wasted several hours making and dying and frosting a cake with cream cheese frosting…before finding out that I should have used buttercream for the outside all along!
Please let my mistake be a cautionary tale for those who come later! 🙂
Oh noooo Dina! I am so sorry to hear this. That is the worst after so much time and effort. I’ve had issues with cream cheese frosting being too soft to work with. I actually swore them off for a long time because of this. These days, when I make a CC frosting, I use an equal or greater amount of butter in it to give it some structure. I hope the cake tasted good at least?? 🙂
What type of frosting tip did you use for this design? Leaf, or just a dollop circle drawn out by a frosting knife? 🙂
Hi Mackenzie! I used a large round tip and an offset spatula. See post for details 🙂
Was it 1a or 2a tip?
Hi Dana! I used both actually because I only had so many round tips!
Amazing cal! Where did you get 6 in cake pans? Mine are all 9 inches. Any advice on scaling (ha) up the recipe to use 9 in pans? Thanks!
Hi Lynn! Thank you! I get all of my cake pans from Fat Daddio’s. You can get them here: http://amzn.to/2t0rucg
If you’re going to use three 9″ pans, I would probably triple the recipe. Just be sure to not fill the pans more than 2/3rds full. Let me know how it turns out!
Hi,i would like to try this with fondant do you think it will work? Your cakes are amazing and tried some of them. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Shaw! You mean fondant scales instead of buttercream?
Just the cake…the red velvet cake i mean..sorry😊
Oh, yes, that should work fine! 🙂
Can you tell me a little more about your technique about getting the gray and red (or green) frosting into your piping bag? Am going to a GoT 40th bday party…as Mellsandre (and hopefully a dragon cake :))
THANKS!
Hi Jen! I only used a pastry bag for the grey. Details of how I did the red and green are in the post (with pictures).
Nice to know that know about only the grey. Red and green on a cutting board, really doesn’t show you how to put them on the cake, how about a video on just how to do the cake instead of all the boring stuff about the show. To much extra stuff about the show and not the decorating the actual cake.
Wow, how wonderful is this cake, inside and out! The technique is simple and impressive, very well explained. Congratulations! 5* from me 🙂
Thanks so much!! I’m glad you like it 🙂
I absolutely LOVE this cake! It looks AMAZING!!! I just had a quick question: did you put the green and red frosting in the pipetting bags with the dark colored frosting, or how did you incorporate the palette you made of the red/green frostings with the rest of the frosting?
Thanks Sam! Details of the technique I used are in the post.
“For the red and green, I created a palette of sorts so that the colors would look blended. From there, the technique I used to create each dragonscale was actually really simple to do — pipe a dot of frosting, scrape some color onto your offset spatula (or spoon), then press and smear the dot. Do that about 100 times around the sides of the cake and then do the top.”
Aw HELL yes, Olivia! Those scales are perfection. Even your cake stand looks dragon-esque. As super fans of GoT, my boyfriend would die if I made this for him. Thanks for sharing. <3
Thanks so much Cassie!! I’m so glad you like it 😀 You should totally make it! It’s not as hard as it might look 🙂
This is so gorgeous! I don’t watch Game of Thrones but this cake is absolutely stunning! I just made my first frosted layer cake last week and I had a hard time just frosting the outside flat and boring! You, my dear, are a genius!
Thank you Caroline! Your cake looks perfectly delicious and amazing too! 🙂
I planned to watch season one when Jason Momoa was on it (faints), but could never find the time. Five seasons later and I still have yet to watch it and likely won’t. This cake tho… AWESOMEly decorated!!
This looks awesome! I love the intense colour of the scales with the subtle flashes of red, green and gold, I don’t care if it stains my teeth black! I don’t think I am bored by any of the storylines in GOT, I love it all 🙂
Thanks so much Hannah! Truthfully, all of the stories are intriguing, I just have some faves! 🙂
This is SO cool, Olivia! I’d love to dive into this cake during GoT (or any other day) 🙂
Thanks so much Ashley! 😀
Whoa Olivia! This cake is stunning! That icing is amazing! Perfect for the season premiere! Your photos are just gorgeous!
Ahh thank you Mary Ann!! xo
WOW!!!!!!!!! awesome frosting!!!!!!!!!! so original!!!!!!!!!! i am a really fan os game of thrones.
It looks fantastic.
Best regards
Thanks so much Olga! 🙂
This is seriously my favourite cake of yours to date 😀 Such a cool technique! And for the storylines, I think we’re the exact opposite – I’m rooting for Daenerys (though I’ll give you that her storyline really fell off after season 1) and I’m usually twiddling my thumbs whenever Arya is on screen. That might change this season, though – the way 5 ended left a pretty interesting subplot for her to get into. Hopefully season 6 will do it justice 😀
I know! I can’t wait 😀 So funny that we’re total opposite, never would have guessed. And thanks! 🙂 xo
SO FUNNY! I am literally the opposite– I could totally do without Arya’s storyline (although it is admittedly getting ever so slightly more interesting) but I am a total Daenerys fan girl, haha. Either way, this cake is AMAZING and I think your frosting turned out beautifully, even if it’s not exactly how you expected it to be. Gorgeous work, Olivia!
Lol, I think I’m in the minority for sure on that! Thanks so much Lynn 🙂 xoxo
This cake is absolutely amazing!!
Thanks Cristina!!
This cake is beautiful! I love the bright red once you cut into it. I agree, Dany’s storyline is completely boring to me and if she meets an untimely end this season I wouldn’t be too crushed. I’m most looking forward to the fallout from the whitewalker battle beyond the wall and what happened after the brothers turned on their commander. That, and Arya’s storyline. I love how badass her story is.
YES, I’m so glad I have you on my side with the Dany thing. Bore-fest, amiright? And thank you!! 🙂
Girl, you and your cakes always amaze me and this one is totally badass! It’s total Westeros Perfection and I definitely want a slice for breakfast, even if it stains my teeth black for the rest of the day!
You’re the sweetest, thanks so much Rebecca! <3
I haven’t watched any of the GoT seasons yet… I’m still not sure if I’m ever going to (shame on me 😀 ), but I do love your cake. The bright red sponge cake is surprising, I could have swore it’s some sort of chocolate inside. It looks amazing though, well done!
Thanks so much Oana! You should totally check out the series, I feel like you would like it 🙂