Hermione
I am so honored to be a Sugar Angel for Icing Smiles and to have made this cake for a sweet girl’s birthday after she endured an especially difficult year. She loves Hermione and requested Harry Potter for her theme! I tried to capture Hermione in the cake with lots of books, a Gryffindor scarf and a time-turner necklace, which I purchased from Etsy to also be a lasting birthday present for her.
Both tiers are layers of chocolate cakes and white cakes colored red and yellow for the Gryffindor house. Everything is edible except the necklace — I packed a lot of time and love into this cake and it was such a joy to meet the family and see her smile!
Notes from the Kitchen
As with my last HP cake, I made a cobblestone cake board from fondant, an impression mat and lots and lots of petal dust!
I spent an entire day making book spines and needed many of my tools throughout.
To get additional fonts to my own handwriting, I used my acrylic letter stamps and a food marker for some of the spines.
A closer look at the book spines that will surround the middle tier. Every spine got painted with dust for aging, dimension and character. A lot of work, but so fun!
I first pressed rice krispy treats into a relative cone shape and then used modeling chocolate around it to sculpt the sorting hat.
In addition to chocolate cakes, I colored white cakes red and yellow for the Gryffindor house.
The cakes settled overnight and it’s go-time!
A double batch of vanilla buttercream for the crumbcoat and filling between layers.
I leveled the cakes and added vanilla buttercream between each layer.
Once stacked, each cake will get a crumbcoat of buttercream before I lay the fondant over. This helps to fill in gaps and adhere the fondant.
Once the crumbcoat is on, I work very quickly to roll out the fondant and get it on before the buttercream sets. I then trim away the excess at the bottom using a pizza cutter.
I purchased little shoe print rubber stamps from Etsy and used a food marker to add Marauder’s Map footprints all around the bottom tier.
For the inscription, I rolled up a piece of white fondant for the scroll, stamped on lettering, painted with dust and then lightly airbrushed.
I painted black petal dust in a few places on the sorting hat and then airbrushed with more brown and black.
I airbrushed the middle tier a deeper black and then a few colors on the bottom tier.
I transferred the bottom tier to the cake board and added dowels to both the bottom and middle cakes. This cake is very heavy and it needs to bear the weight!
Oh man, so much happened since the last photo. I placed the middle tier and used bc to stick on all my book spines. I also made a scarf from fondant and painted it with petal dust to look worn.
I then placed the hat, time-turner necklace and inscription. Revelio! 100 points for Gryffindor.
