Harry Potter's Birthday Cake
A gooey chocolate cake with a Butterbeer-inspired frosting!
Harry Potter’s 11th birthday cake
Time: 2+ hours | Difficulty: 4/5 | Yield: 1 10-inch cake
July 31st is Harry Potter’s birthday!
In “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, Hagrid gives Harry a “large, sticky chocolate cake” with “Happy Birthday Harry” written on it in green icing. This is that cake!! Well, it’s an approximation at least, and the most important thing is that it’s really moist and very delicious.
You can celebrate Harry’s birthday like I did, by making this gooey chocolate cake, with a pink, Butterbeer-inspired frosting. I’m not really a baker, so I don’t have tools like an electric mixer—that’s why I developed this recipe to be completely doable by hand. (This cake will be a lot easier if you use your wand, but I’ll write it out the Muggle way.) I I mashed up a few recipes from Mark Bittman and others, and frosted it to look like the movie. I hope you enjoy it, and have fun making it!! (By the way, if you want to make it REALLY authentic, you can sit on it before serving….)
Ingredients/tools:
For the cake:
1 stick of butter
4g of dark chocolate baking chips
1 cup sugar
2 separated eggs
Vanilla extract
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups milk
For the frosting:
1 stick salted butter (easier to handle if it’s near room temperature)
4 cups icing sugar
6 tbsp cream or milk
3g butterscotch chips
Salt
Cinnamon
Green and red food coloring
A big pot
A small sauce pot
2 big bowls
A 10-inch tin
Baking parchment
Method
Step one, turn on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Then pre-heat the oven to 350°.
In a big pot, melt the butter and the chocolate together over low heat.
Add in the sugar and stir to combine.
Beat the egg yolks and add to the pot.
Add the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Alternate adding the dry mix and the milk into the chocolate mixture. Stir to combine everything. The result should be all gooey and yummy and smooth.
Beat the two egg whites with a fork until they’re as fluffy as they can be, and fold them into the cake. The batter will get all moussey!!
Grease a 10 inch tin and place a round of baking parchment in the bottom (you can measure it by tracing the tin onto the parchment, and cutting it out), then pour in the mix.
Bake for about 40 minutes. The cake is done when you stick a dowel in and it comes out clean! Then set the cake to cool on a rack.
Make the frosting: In the small sauce pot, melt the butterscotch chips with a touch of butter.
Meanwhile, cream the rest of the butter in a big bowl with a giant fork. Then alternate adding the confectioner’s sugar and milk until it looks like frosting. Fold in the butterscotch paste.
Add some salt, and some cinnamon. I find the base frosting to be super sweet, so add as much salt and cinnamon as you like, until it tastes warm and salty and Butterbeer-esque!
Separate a little bit of the frosting into a small bowl, and mix in some green food coloring. Mix a few drops of red into the rest to make it pink.
Put the green frosting in a Ziploc bag, and cut a corner to make it into a piping bag.
When the cake has cooled, frost it with the pink icing, and write the letters with the green!
