Mike's Happy Potter Birthday Cake. (March 2002)

This cake turned out far better than I had any right to expect it to. I baked this cake and did a crumb coating the day before, but I really didn't have time to do the decorating until about 3 hours before Mike's party because my family was visiting. Fortunately, I had at least cut out the animal shapes the day before from a thinly rolled sheet of fondant. I never would have finished in time if the fondant hadn't had time to harden some overnight. I colored them by painting them with watered-down food coloring, and then drew in the details with a non-toxic black marker. Everything else is just buttercream icing.

For those of you who don't know what this cake is, even after looking at the picture, it's a Harry Potter cake. Each of the 4 quadrants of the cake is the shield of one of the 4 houses at Hogwarts: Gryffindor (the lion), Slytherin (the snake), Hufflepuff (the badger), and Ravenclaw (the eagle). I was afraid Mike wouldn't recognize it, but he did. He saved the animals too (they're on a plate on top of his fridge), although the Slytherin snake broke.

Problems: You know, I really didn't have any *problems*, but I plenty of anxiety. I was just sure the animals would come out a disaster, and the shield designs would just look like random blobs of colored icing, and I was sure I'd drop the cake before I got it to Mike's, or that I wouldn't arrive until after the party was over, but everything turned out well. Oh, I didn't have time to whip up another batch of icing to decorate the sides of the cake, so I just used up what I had left from the shields, and I think I had *just* enough to finish.