Harry Potter Castle Cake

This cake came about because a Harry Potter fan found out about the Hogwarts cake I made for my daughter. He wanted a Harry Potter Cake for his tenth birthday. With Hogwarts on it. Strawberry cake.

So, I wanted to put the boy's name on the cake in the Harry Potter script. I found an image online of the script I wanted and I needed a few size options, so I changed the zoom of the script and traced the letters onto a piece of paper in three different sizes.

 I also traced an image of Hogwarts that was relatively similar heights. Many of the images has the left side significantly higher than the right. I wanted to wrap the silhouette around the cake.

 Then I cut out the letters of Quentin's name. I chose the smallest one because it seemed to fit best on the size of cake with the design I wanted.

 I know there's only one N, but I cut out two. I stuck the light cut outs onto some orange fondant with a tiny bit of water, which ended up being a bad idea because they were hard to remove, but with a bit of texture repair, it worked out.

 And cut them out of the orange. Quentin's favorite color is orange.

 How fun is that? I love the Q.

 I wanted to make a golden snitch. I wrapped some skewers with yellow fondant and left a bit of fondant on it to form the wings.

 I made thin cuts in the wings to make them more wing-like. I took a ball of yellow fondant and pressed some texture into the ball.

 Then I wanted to make a sorting hat. I took the leftover yellow fondant and colored it with brown gel food coloring. It took a lot of food coloring, but it eventually turned brown.

 I used the brown fondant to made a sorting hat. I pressed the folds in with the back of a knife.

 Then I set all of them aside to dry overnight.

 When I was ready to stack the cake, I prepared the filling by cutting strawberries in small pieces.

 And mixing them with strawberry jam.

 Then I piped a dam of buttercream and poured the strawberry filling into it. I spread it around a bit.

 And cut one last strawberry to fill in all the gaps.

 I added a couple dollops of buttercream to help the top of the cake to stick.

 Then I crumb coated the cake and chilled it about 20 minutes.

 While the cake was chilling, I prepared my black fondant. I kneaded it really well, because it was quite dry.

 Then I frosted the cake again and smoothed it really well. And cleaned up the cake board with a damp rag.

 I rolled out the black fondant.

 And covered the cake with it. As you can see, it was really dry and tore at the edges.

 So, I made a fondant paste with some leftover black fondant mixed with clear alcohol.

 Then I used the paste to fill in the cracks.

 I made some gray fondant with white fondant and a bit of black. I rolled it out quite thick. Maybe a quarter of an inch. I also cut out the paper tracing I made earlier.

 I used a brick texture mat to put some texture in the gray fondant. I pressed it over and over onto the fondant, overlapping itself.

 Then I laid the paper cut out over the fondant and cut it out with a knife. How cool does this look?

 And I made two of them.

 Then I wrapped the Hogwarts cut outs around the cake. I used skewers to hold up the highest towers.

 Then I placed Quentin's name facing the largest gap in the castle.

 I also placed the sorting hat on the top of the cake. This Harry Potter cutter is one I've had for a while, and decided to use it on the same orange of the name and placed it in the gap.

 Then I placed the wings in the golden snitch.

 I painted the snitch gold and placed it on the top of the cake.

 Finally, I painted the HP gold and added gold windows to the castle.

 I am in love with this cake.

 It's really obviously Hogwarts, without being a copy of the cake I made Sabrina.

 The golden snitch shines, the sorting hat is recognizable, but how fun is the name in the Harry Potter script?

 This is perfect for any die-hard Harry Potter fan.

 Happy Birthday, Quentin!

Watch us make this cake on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/rlb29RiwUdY
Schaut zu wie wir diese Torte auf YouTube machen hier: https://youtu.be/H5blLnBe6T4