Happee Birthdae Jo and Harry!

We can’t just make a yellow cake. In order to celebrate two of our favorite beings of all time – JK Rowling and Harry Potter – Kim and I made them a birthday cake! (Us and two thirds of all other Harry Potter fans, most likely).

Happy Birthday Jo and Harry!

 

We made the one that Hagrid gives Harry in the first movie:

Film version of the cake

And here’s ours:

Our version of the cake

I say it looks pretty darn good! It didn’t taste bad either, though I will admit I messed it up (I’m honestly losing faith in my cooking ability, following in the footsteps of some of my friends…) I added 1 cup less flour than needed. Whoops. It was still good though; it wasn’t as spongy, but more moist and crystalized, due to the more concentrated amount of sugar.

Here’s the FULL recipe:

• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup butter or margarine
• 1-3/4 cups sugar
• 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1-1/4 cups milk

The frosting was a cream cheese based, but we added a banana, which is what those odd chunks are…. We didn’t add sugar to the frosting, to offset the concentrated sugar in the cake. Kim and I thought it balanced nicely.

Banana Cream Cheese frosting

• 3 oz cream cheese
• 1 banana (ripe is better)
• 4 tbspn butter
• 1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• We put in red dye to make it pink – just a drop or two will do it.

Kim’s note: This cake was supposed to be a normal yellow cake. I wanted to make the perfect ordinary cake. I feel it is important to master the basics. Well, as Beth mentioned above, one cup flour was accidentally left out. And as we were making the frosting, I had the idea to spread a puréed banana in between the two cake layers, which ultimately led Beth to say, “We can’t just make a yellow cake”. Someday, perhaps, I will.

Have Your Cake and Play With It Too!

I like making people feel special on their birthdays. Birthdays are kind of stupid that way. The person doesn’t do anything differently, but they get all this extra attention like they’ve jumped this huge life milestone.

At any rate, it’s fun making them feel special, so I try to do what I can.  It was my boyfriend’s birthday on Thursday and in addition to sending him this birthday playlist I compiled on YouTube, I made him an interactive destructive cake.

Wait, what?

Yep. I got an idea from this video. I wanted to make it a tall and unstable scene on the cake, and then sling-shot marshmallows at it.

I couldn’t do mine quite like the video’s, because I had to transport it, but that didn’t make it any less fun to destroy! (Though the kit-kats were a little stubborn; no amount of marshmallow force would knock those suckers down! >:/ )

I did dinosaurs for two reasons: 1) they had dinosaur gummies at Meijer and 2) it seemed the most politically correct setting to destroy. And making the dinosaur nests gave me an excuse to gauge out the innards of a BIG Reese’s PB cup.

How awesome would it be to market and sell these? Like, create kits of cakes, all the add-ons, and the sling-shot; and kids can assemble and then just demolish them. *strokes chin in deep thought*