Before recent events, I had never ordered a custom cake. Not even for my wedding reception. That whole deal was casual, and cake was the least of my worries then.

Mom: What about the cake?

Me: *shrug* I don’t know. I guess we should get one.

Mom: You want me to take care of that?

Me: Sure.

It was a very nice sheet cake that served the obligatory wedding-reception-cake purposes.

But as my 50th birthday approached, I got it into my head that I wanted fancy cake. Cake so special and amazing that if you saw it somewhere, you’d be struck by its awesomeness and try to think how to ask it out, but in the end you wouldn’t because you know it can do better and you really aren’t in this cake’s league. That kind of cake.

I found my cake artist at Kelly’s Cakes. When I told Kelly I wanted a dragon on the cake, she asked if I wanted it to be in the style of the O’Connor Dungeons & Dragons type—I knew I had the right person for the job.

And this was the cake!

Photos courtesy of my friend Jo at wavytail.com.

You guys, look at the details! The little tears in the wings! All the scaling! The teeth! His adorable nostrils!

He’s made of modeling chocolate, with fondant wings and gum paste details on his head. So, yes, he’s technically edible. My quandary now is whether to go ahead and eat him until the sugar overload makes me ill, or try to keep him wrapped in plastic until he decomposes. Or I could throw everything else in my freezer away and keep him in there forever, just so I can peek in on him every so often. Freezer dragon could be a fun thing, right?