Happy Birthday Harry Potter (and J.K. Rowling)! We recreated the birthday cake Hagrid gave Harry on his eleventh birthday in first feature film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. This cake makes the perfect addition to any Harry Potter party you’re throwing today. So how did we make this Harry Potter Birthday Cake?
Fatima and I love Harry Potter. When the books first came out, I remember going to Barnes and Noble on the night of their release to wait in line until midnight. When Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were released, I stayed up all night and the next day to finish them. Fatima said she just went to the nearest 24-hour Price Chopper, walk in and pick up a book. No lines!
Our Harry Potter Birthday Cake is made with boxed cake mix.
This is an easy peasy approach to the cake. You’ll need your favorite boxed chocolate cake mix, a few cans of store-bought frosting, red and brown (optional) dye for icing, and a tube of green decorating icing. Every time we blog about boxed cake, everyone comes out of the woodwork to stick their noses up at us. 👏🏻We. 👏🏻Don’t. 👏🏻Care. Boxed cake mix is delicious and we know you secretly agree.
Don’t get me wrong, making a cake from scratch is so much fun. But if you’re planning a Harry Potter themed party and have a million other things to do, baking a cake from scratch is the last thing on your mind. Besides it’s all about the frosting decoration.
As any Harry Potter superfan would know, the cake in the film is portrayed differently than in the Sorcerer’s Stone book:
“From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with ‘Happy Birthday Harry’ written on it in green icing.”
In the film, it’s a pink frosted cake (presumed to be chocolate underneath) with “Happee Birthdae Harry” written in green icing. Since we’re basing our Harry Potter Birthday Cake off of the film, we’re going with a chocolate cake and pink vanilla frosting and what I hope to think was a whimsical spelling of “Happee Birthdae”.
The sticky chocolate cake.
I’ve always been wary about baking a chocolate cake. It either comes out too dry, burnt or under done. But this fudgy cake from Duncan Hines delivered. It was the moistest chocolate sponge I’ve had in a long time.
This cute little cake is just that. It’s a three-layer, five-inch cake. The writing was a little harder to recreate at this size. But once I frosted the outside in pink, I used a tooth pick to write out ‘Happee Birthdae Harry.’ The last ‘R’ in Harry got a little weird, but it was hot and the frosting was melting!
Harry Potter Birthday Cake
Ingredients
- 1 box of your favorite chocolate cake mix + ingredients
- 1 can of vanilla frosting
- Red & Brown (optional) dye for icing
- 1 can of chocolate frosting
- 1 tube of green decorating icing
Directions
- Use butter to grease your cake pan. I learned this on Rachel Ray and it is so much better than flouring the pan.
- Follow the directions on the back of the cake mix box. Bake at least two layers of cake. We used a 5-inch cake pan.
- When the cake is done baking, let sit on a baking rack to cool completely before frosting.
- Add 1-2 drops of the red and brown dye to the can of vanilla frosting and stir until well combined. Add more until desired color. The Wilton dye I use is super strong. So I used just a little red, and used brown to dull the pink.
- Pipe the top of the first layer with the chocolate frosting.
- Place the second layer of cake on the top of the frosting and pipe chocolate frosting on top of the second layer.
- Add the last cake layer and frost the outside of the cake with the pink frosting.
- Time to write. Using a tooth pick, trace the letters out on the top of the cake. This will help to space everything out ahead of time.
- Using the green decorating icing, write out “Happee Birthdae Harry”.
- That’s it! Proudly display at your party and devour while watching your favorite HP film.
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