Throwback to when I made a Harry Potter Cake

The fun isn't quite over yet, folks!

Here's an extra Boxing Day surprise for y'all, 

a throwback to the time I made a Harry Potter cake!

A colleague at work has a daughter who loves Harry Potter almost as much as my daughter and myself, so much so, that she decided to have a Harry Potter theme for her confirmation party this spring. My colleague asked if I could bake a cake for the party, and I said yes. What I didn't tell her, though, was that I planned to make it a very special Harry Potter cake. I had never made a cake that was decorated with anything more than frosting and sprinkles before, so it had to be easy enough for me to do it, but fancy enough to really blow the party guests minds. Why else should I spend hours and hours making a cake, if it'd only turn out mediocre? As always, I consulted Google and Pinterest, and found literally hundreds of gorgeous Harry Potter themed cakes. The talent, creativity and skills out there, it's freaking amazing!

I quickly decided on making a rectangular rather than a round cake, as I thought that a rectangular cake would be easier to decorate. Most ractangular Harry Potter-cakes out there are books of some sorts, so that's what I decided to make too.

I bought a plastic golden snitch like this one to decorate the cake, all other decorations were made from sugarpaste/fondant of different colours, plus the wand that was made from chocolate that I melted half way and then rolled. I made all the decorational elements a little now and a little then over a few days, and stored them in the fridge covered in plastic in the meantime.

I also made a cake tray/plate to display the cake on. I cut out a wooden plate approximately 30x45 cm in size, printed a large Marauder's Map image on paper and glued that to the wooden plate. I covered the paper with transparent self-adhesive film, and finally taped golden glitter tape around the edges of the wooden plate. That made for a smashing Harry Potter cake plate in my opinion.

The cake itself was a rectangular roasting pan dark chocolate cake, that I first cut in two layers, and then in half, to make 4 thin layers on top of each other, with lots of delicious chocolate frosting in between the layers. I put it onto the cake tray, trimmed it a bit to make it nice and rectangular, and covered the whole thing in a thin layer of frosting as well. Then came the difficult part.

I kneaded together several packages of brown sugarpaste and rolled it out on a special non-stick rolling mat. I trimmed it a bit and then covered the top and one long side of the cake. For someone who had never done anything like that, it was quite difficult, but I only had one go, and thankfully I managed it OK. I then rolled out some white sugarpaste, and used it to covered the two short sides and last long side. Using the point of a knife I made subtle horizontal lines in the white fondant to make it look like the sides of a book. I then dusted it with some cocoa powder to make it look a bit aged. I added thin stripes of brown fondant around the edges on the bottom as well, to make it look like the book had a back cover. When I was satisfied with how the book looked, all I had to do was add all the decorative elements I had made in the days before, the gold letters and trimmings, the chocolate wand, the glasses, the Gryffindor tie, the Sorting Hat and the plastic snitch.

For a complete amateur, I think the end result was friggin' awesome. The girl loved it, the mom nearly cried because she loved it so much, all the guests loved it, and nearly wouldn't eat it and ruin it. But they did, and it tasted great, too, I know, because I got to try some.

If anybody's interested, here's the cake recipe, metric units:

• 4 1/2 dl water
• 8 tbsp baking cocoa powder
• 400 grams butter
• 700 grams sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
• 300 grams crème fraîche, full fat
• 4 eggs (60 grams each), mixed together
• 2 tsp baking soda/natron/sodium bicarbonate
• 550 grams white wheat all purpose flour
• 2 tsp salt

Put oven on 200 degrees Celcius, coventional electrig oven, no fan/convection.

Cover a rectangular roasting pan (ca. 40 x 33 cm) with non-stick baking paper.

Mix cocoa and water in a pot and heat it to an almost boil. Add butter, turn off the heat and let the butter melt.

Pour the mix into a large mixing bowl and add sugar and vanilla, and miw everything carefully together.

Add crème fraîche and mix some more before you add the eggs.

Add baking soda, and sift in the flowers as you mix,

Mix until you get a smooth, rather runny cake batter.

Pour the batter into the pan and cook it for approximately 30 minutes in the middle of the oven.

Let it cool on a cake grid.

CHOCOLATE FROSTING:

A pudding of milk and flour should be made the day before you make the actual frosting.

• 3,5 dl milk
• 4 tbsp white all purpose wheat flour

Boil this while stirring to make a thick pudding, let it cool in the fridge until the next day.

You'll also need

• 500 grams butter, cold and diced
• 500 grams icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
• 200 grams of melted chocolate 70% cocoa

Run icing sugar, butter and flour/milk pudding in a powerful mixer for 15 minutes! 

From the start of the mixing this frosting looks like a disaster, but when you mix it long enough suddenly something almost magical happens and it turns in to this wonderful and smooth yet fluffy frosting. Mix in the melted chocolate towards the end.

This batch of frosting turned out to be a little too small for the assembly of the Harry Potter cake, so if you're going to try something similar, I suggest you make 1 1/2 batch of frosting.