Norbert(a) Cake

We’re all Harry Potter all the time at our house these days. So for his 8th birthday Sam wanted a cake of Norbert hatching out of an egg on Hagrid’s table. Here is what the scene looked like in the movie.

The thing about baby dragons is that they’re mostly wings. So in order to have enough actual cake in the body to serve the guests, I had to make the cake pretty huge. That base is a 3-foot diameter plywood circle, covered with wood-grained fondant.

The cake is stacked and sculpted onto a foam core base, supported underneath with aluminum straps, then covered with a mix of fondant and modeling chocolate. I started with a light skin-toned base and airbrushed the colors on top. Sam even helped me sculpt some of the details.

The wings began with a wire armature, covered with gum paste. The membrane is made of gelatin. I’m particularly pleased with the airbrushed veins.

My absolute favorite part about the whole cake, though, is the string of drool hanging from her mouth. It’s piping gel with a strand of sheet gelatin in the middle for structure.

To make the egg shell, I draped gum paste over an oversized plastic Easter egg, then Sam helped me to break into pieces and place it around Norbert like he had just hatched out of it.

The dishes are also made of gum paste. I formed them over a lovely set of china that my sister’s mother-in-law gave her. Obviously, it needed the finishing touch of a little piping gel tea residue in the teacup.

The treats on the dishes are rock cakes and treacle fudge that Sam and his mom made from recipes in The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. We have also made the pumpkin pasties recipe from this book and all the recipes have turned out great. Highly recommended.

Inside, the cake is chocolate with chocolate buttercream icing. Sam helped me make that, too. For once, the amount of cake that I made was appropriate to the size of the party.

After the party, I tweeted photos of the cake to J.K. Rowling and she not only liked it, she retweeted it! As a result, my tweet is currently at over 965,000 impressions and 15,500 likes. Based on the replies, Harry Potter fans are some of the nicest people in the world.

Update: It's now at over 1,000,000 impressions!

Note:

Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling has disappointed me and many other people. By publicly opposing trans rights and misrepresenting trans people, she has fallen far short of the standard of loving acceptance set by the heroic characters in her books. To learn more, I recommend this open letter to J.K. Rowling from Mermaids, a group in the UK that advocates for trans and gender-diverse children. If you want to help, you can donate to Mermaids, Gender Spectrum, and many other groups working to support trans and gender-diverse people.

Monster Book of Monsters

My nephew loves Harry Potter and he loves animals, so I thought he would like a Monster Book of Monsters for Christmas. I made it in the form of a box so he could use it to keep his special treasures.

I made the box out of plywood. The pages are strips of paper, all glued around the box.

I made the eyes out of the little brown stones you use in vases. I got the idea from this tutorial and it worked brilliantly. The face around the eyes, the teeth and gums, and the title text on the cover are made of Model Magic because I wanted a sculptable material that would remain somewhat soft when it dried. The tongue is made out of wood because it also serves as a latch to keep the box closed. The interior of the lid is lined with faux suede and the exterior is, of course, faux fur. I gave it a razor cut with my x-acto knife to make if nice and scruffy looking.

I think it turned out great and I do think my nephew likes it. It may be a little too accurate, though, because initially he was super creeped out by it and it was at least a week before he would bring it into his own room.

Note:

Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling has disappointed me and many other people. By publicly opposing trans rights and misrepresenting trans people, she has fallen far short of the standard of loving acceptance set by the heroic characters in her books. To learn more, I recommend this open letter to J.K. Rowling from Mermaids, a group in the UK that advocates for trans and gender-diverse children. If you want to help, you can donate to Mermaids, Gender Spectrum, and many other groups working to support trans and gender-diverse people.

Snitch

My niece loves imagining that she’s a master Quidditch player and inventor of superior racing brooms, so I decided to make her a snitch for Christmas, which is also a secret treasure box. Of course, it had to be oversized, because otherwise she couldn’t keep anything in it larger than the Resurrection Stone.

I began with two wooden bowls from Ikea that were perfectly sized and shaped. The wings are make of strips of ribbon on a tulle base, wrapped over bent brass rod. All the trim on the sphere is model magic. The catch is magnetic.

Note:

Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling has disappointed me and many other people. By publicly opposing trans rights and misrepresenting trans people, she has fallen far short of the standard of loving acceptance set by the heroic characters in her books. To learn more, I recommend this open letter to J.K. Rowling from Mermaids, a group in the UK that advocates for trans and gender-diverse children. If you want to help, you can donate to Mermaids, Gender Spectrum, and many other groups working to support trans and gender-diverse people.

Lord Voldemort Pumpkin

I somehow never seem to have much time for pumpkin carving these days, probably because I now spend the month of October making Halloween costumes for my niece and nephew. But this year we decided to go the store-bought route for our Harry Potter costumes, so I had a little time. I wanted to practice my 3-d pumpkin sculpting, so I made this little Lord Volde-pumpkin.

Note:

Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling has disappointed me and many other people. By publicly opposing trans rights and misrepresenting trans people, she has fallen far short of the standard of loving acceptance set by the heroic characters in her books. To learn more, I recommend this open letter to J.K. Rowling from Mermaids, a group in the UK that advocates for trans and gender-diverse children. If you want to help, you can donate to Mermaids, Gender Spectrum, and many other groups working to support trans and gender-diverse people.