Hagrid's Birthday Cake

One day I was scrolling through Tastemade's Snapchat channel and came across an article about people ordering their birthday cakes to be decorated like that of the one Hagrid gave to Harry for his 11th birthday. I screenshotted it in April last year and saved it to make for my friend's birthday this February. I was SO excited to make this cake because she loves Harry Potter and I wanted to see her reaction to the cake! Also, decorating cakes is my favorite part because I hate waiting for them to bake and cool down out of the oven. 

I decided to make a 2-layer vanilla cake with chocolate ganache in between, frosted with strawberry buttercream. I'm the kind of baker that likes to make everything from scratch, when possible, so I did just that. The only thing I didn't make was the green sparkle gel frosting for writing the letters. I found a popular vanilla cake recipe on Pinterest and it perfectly filled the 8-inch cake pans. For the frosting and ganache, I used a Frostings book I bought from Homegoods.

This time I was patient–I waited for the cold ingredients to reach room temperature (I usually don't do that, but the recipe highly suggested it for best results). And I let the cakes cool entirely–I actually left home to go watch a soccer game, so when I returned there was no more waiting. I put the cake on a silver serving platter I had from some catered food (lol). I halved the buttercream recipe because I always have so much leftover–I was worried there wouldn't be enough to cover the cake, but it was the perfect amount (I didn't put frosting in between, though, just the ganache).

The frosting was delicious! It tasted EXACTLY like the one from my favorite cupcake shop. The pink color is natural, from the strawberries; I try to avoid food dye in baking. I only needed a fourth cup of strawberries. It was surprisingly easy to make the buttercream strawberry-flavored. I just pureed them in the Nutribullet and then put them in a saucepan to reduce them a bit. Next I mixed them into the buttercream with the paddle on the stand mixer. The pink color was pretty close to the cake from the movie. I really need to invest in one of those spinning cake stands and an offset spatula to make my frosting easier and prettier–I think I did a pretty good job with the spatula and spinning the tray, though. 

Before I piped the letters, I outlined them with a toothpick. The spacing worked out well because my friend's name, Julia, has the same amount of letters as Harry. The green gel piping was came out super easy, no explosions or splatters, and I was VERY VERY satisfied and proud of the final product. 

Since she's my next door neighbor, I walked over on the morning of her birthday to deliver the cake and hang out. She loved it so much, and her mom thought it was adorable! When other people enjoy my baking, it makes me really happy inside–and that's one of my favorite parts about baking–sharing it with my friends and family.