6 Best Harry Potter Birthday Cake Ideas + 3 Tasty Alternatives

Jacqueline Eisenbraun (Senior Editor)

Harry Potter: the boy wizard first came into our lives in the late 90s and has been a beloved character ever since. People around the world adore the books, movies, and ever expanding merchandise. Here you’ll find the most delicious Harry Potter birthday cake ideas.

Harry Potter’s cake, of course, was a relatively ugly thing made for him by Hagrid. It was made with giant heaps of love, but the misspelled green icing text was perhaps not a sight for sore eyes.

Nevertheless, Harry loved it. Imagine then, how much your birthday boy or girl will love the Harry Potter-inspired cakes below. We’ll cover the original as well, but you’ll also find a selection of showstopping cakes that are, well, a little nicer looking.

Harry Potter Birthday Cake Ideas for Boys

Harry Potter Birthday Cake Ideas for Boys

Boys and girls love Harry Potter equally and all of the cakes below can undoubtedly work for either gender. With that said, here are our top Harry Potter birthday cake ideas for boys.

You can make these as simple or elaborate as you like. Above all, have fun with them, and enjoy seeing the joy in your young Potter fan’s eyes when you present them with their special cake.

Here you’ll find more birthday cake ideas for boys.

Harry Potter ‘House’ Cake

Harry Potter ‘House’ Cake

This is arguably the simplest Harry Potter cake you can make at home. To create this, first bake our basic recipe below. Once your cake has fully cooled, frost using a chocolate buttercream of your choice.

Next, add a layer of colorful fondant in the birthday boy’s favorite house color — red for Griffindor, yellow for Hufflepuff, blue for Ravenclaw, or green for Slytherin. Top tip: a slightly thicker sheet of fondant will hide more imperfections than a really thin one. It’ll also be sweeter though.

Finally, add a pre-bought house ‘logo’ made of sugar paper or fondant to the front of your cake. You can leave it at that or add some more fondant decorations to the top of your cake. A golden snitch is a good one (if you’re making it yourself, use a Ferrero Rocher), as are Harry Potter’s glasses or a wand.

Pared Back Silver Grey Cake

Pared Back Silver Grey Cake

Nothing says classy like this slightly moody cake. It’s perfect for older Potter fans or teen boys. Start by baking our basic recipe below, then frost in gray-hued buttercream once your cake has fully cooled.

To make this, you’ll want to add a tiny bit of black food dye to the whitest frosting you can find. Make the frosting as smooth as you can using a cake scraper.

Now make the HP logo from fondant and spray it with edible gold. Once dried, add this to the front of your cake. You may wish to add a few more flakes of edible gold all over the cake for a subtle sparkling effect.

Leave your cake as is or add a simple number cake topper alongside a wand and golden snitch.

Wizard’s Uniform Cake

Wizard’s Uniform Cake

Our Wizard’s Uniform Cake is one of the trickier designs to replicate, but well worth the effort. You’ll want to bake our basic recipe below, then cool it fully. Frost with white buttercream and add a layer of white fondant on top.

Add a red and yellow Gryffindor tie made of fondant to the front of the cake. Next, layer gray fondant, and cut a small v-shape at the front — this will be your wizard’s jumper and it should slightly cover the bottom of the tie.

Use a butter knife to add a little bit of a pattern to the jumper’s edge to make it look more realistic.

Finally, add a slightly loose layer of black fondant for the cloak. You may wish to add a readymade sugar paper Hogwarts logo to the side of the cape or not. Finish with a golden snitch (made with a Ferrero Rocher and two gold craft paper ‘wings’) to one side of the top of the cake, and you’re done.

Harry Potter Birthday Cakes for Girls

Harry Potter Birthday Cakes for Girls

These cake designs are all fun options for girls as well as boys, and can be modified to suit anybody. With that said, our girly Harry Potter birthday cake designs have just a touch more sparkle than the boy designs above. How much sparkly magic you add will be up to you.

Top tip: our sparkly Hedwig cake has all the sparkle.

Here you’ll find more birthday cake ideas for girls.

Sparkling Hedwig Cake

Sparkling Hedwig Cake

As with our ‘House’ cake above, we’ll start off with the easiest cake you can make first. The Sparkling Hedwig Cake is relatively effortless to create, but will make such an impression on your little Harry Potter fan.

To create it, bake our basic birthday cake recipe below, then coat the entire cake in the whitest frosting once cooled. You don’t need to make this too smooth, as you want the finished product to look a little like sparkling snow. Add edible white glitter all over the cake.

Finally, decorate with a simple wooden number cake topper or number candle, as well as a fondant Hedwig owl. Your fondant owl can be made well in advance, as sugarpaste figurines will stay good in a cool, dark place for up to two months.

Alternatively, you can buy a white owl figurine ahead of time or use a clean plastic version. Just remember to remove it before anyone bites into Hedwig.

Open Book and Wand Cake

Open Book and Wand Cake

This cake isn’t that simple, but the finished result still looks a lot trickier than it actually is to make. To start with, you’ll want to bake our basic recipe below but using a rectangle tin.

Once your cake has fully cooled, measure the center of the cake with it facing you horizontally. Carve a slim, slightly rounded triangle out of the center, to mimic the middle of an open book.

Next, frost your cake with white buttercream and cover it with a layer of white fondant. You can add a few sheets of extra fondant to look like pages, or just indent the one sheet slightly using a butter knife.

Add a fondant ribbon bookmark to the middle, and write a birthday message in chocolate. Finally, add some sugar paste Harry Potter glasses and a wand.

Cute Harry Potter Unicorn Cake

Cute Harry Potter Unicorn Cake

You’ll undoubtedly have seen plenty of versions of this popular birthday cake before. This one comes with a little twist. To make it, you’ll want to bake our basic recipe below.

Once your cake has fully cooled, add white buttercream all over and smooth it as best you can. Add a unicorn horn and ears made of fondant to the top of the cake, as well as sugarpaste eyes with lashes to the front. Add buttercream ‘hair’ around the horn and the back of the cake.

Top tip: use the colors of the birthday girl’s favorite Harry Potter house to inspire the colors of your buttercream.

Finally, add a fondant Harry Potter lightning scar and black fondant glasses. This cute and funny cake is sure to delight even the youngest Harry Potter fans. You can make this even girlier by adding edible glitter.

Simple Harry Potter Theme Cake Designs

Simple Harry Potter Theme Cake Designs

As the original cake can hardly be described as being a boyish or girly cake, we’ll get into it here: Hagrid’s cake for Harry was likely the simplest design you could ever make.

It was described as a large, gooey chocolate cake with ‘Happee Birthdae Harry’ written on it in green icing. The book didn’t detail that the frosting had to be pink, but the movie made it so.

To make this simplest of cake designs, start by baking our basic recipe below. Once your cake has fully cooled, frost with pink buttercream. Write the happy birthday message in green icing, taking little care to make it too neat (Hagrid was hardly a neat giant.)

You can modify this cake with the birthday boy or girl’s name, or just keep it as it is for the die-hard Harry Potter fan. Either way, to make this a true showstopper, you may wish to add extra chocolate chips to the batter. Extra chocolateyness can never go wrong.

Best Quotes & Captions for Harry Potter Fans

Best Quotes & Captions for Harry Potter Fans

While birthday messages should always be personal and from the heart, birthday messages for Harry Potter fans are a little easier. Simply put, there’s just so much to choose from.

Below is a small selection of the best Harry Potter-themed birthday messages you can incorporate into your perfect birthday greeting.

• ‘Happy birthday to my favorite muggle.’
• ‘It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be. Happy Birthday!’
• ‘Have a wand-erful birthday.’
• ‘It’s not your 11th birthday, but it may not be too late for an owl from Hogwarts to arrive.’
• ‘Are you sure you’re a muggle? Because you make everything magical. Happy Birthday!’

Beautiful Harry Potter Gift Ideas

Beautiful Harry Potter Gift Ideas

There are so many great gift ideas for the Harry Potter fan in your life. From special edition books to themed merchandise, to homemade goodies. We cover some of the top gifts your favorite Harry Potter fan (hopefully) won’t have yet.

1. Goodie Hamper: this is a great gift whether your Harry Potter-fan has tried some of the individual items before or not. You can include a selection of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, Butterbeer, a Chocolate Frog, and other tasty Harry Potter treats.

These hampers are usually available readymade too, so all you’ll need to add is a card (and a homemade cake.)

2. Harry Potter Decals: nowadays you can decal just about anything. Enter the Harry Potter decals for mugs, cookie jars, and… toilets. We found a hilarious decal showing an arrow pointing down and ‘Ministry of Magic This Way,’ which you can apply to the inside of your toilet lid.

The perfect present to add a touch of humor to your Harry Potter gift.

All the Wands: Harry Potter wands can be purchased as ornamental items, but also as makeup brushes, pens, and even cutlery. Imagine stirring up your next magic potion with a Harry Potter wooden spoon wand.

This is the ideal combo gift with a Harry Potter-themed cookery book, of which you’ll find a wide variety available in bookstores and online.

Basic Recipe for a Harry Potter Birthday Cake: A Simple Guide

Basic Recipe for a Harry Potter Birthday Cake: A Simple Guide

Our basic recipe will give you the most delicious chocolate-flavored Harry Potter birthday cake or 24 tasty cupcakes. It’s also incredibly versatile, and you may substitute certain ingredients for alternatives if you have any dietary restrictions.

Eggs can be replaced with aquafaba or yogurt, milk with almond or oat milk, butter with coconut oil or vegan butter, and so forth. You can also reduce the amount of sugar or swap it for a healthier fruit concentrate or coconut sugar.

• 2 ¼ cups self-raising flour
• 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
• ½ cup salted butter
• 2 tsps vanilla extract
• 2 tbsps cocoa powder
• 1 ½ cups whole milk
• 3 medium eggs

And here’s how you do it:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease two 9” cake tins or one 9”x13” pan liberally with butter or cooking oil. If you’re using a rectangular cake tin, opt for two 7×9” ones or one 9×11” tin.
2. Whisk the sugar and butter in a mixer until fluffy and slightly pale in color.
3. Next, mix the eggs, milk, cocoa powder and vanilla extract in a separate bowl until smooth.
4. Gradually add the eggs to the butter and sugar cream. Sieve in the flour while continuing to whisk until you have a lump-free, smooth batter.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared tins. Bake them for 30-35 minutes. When they’re done, the centers should be softly browned yet springy to the touch.

Cool down your finished cakes to room temperature. Now you may frost them using a buttercream of your choice (the more chocolate the better) and decorate them per one of our designs above.

Top tip: Make sure you use the best quality cocoa powder you can find. Add extra chocolate chips to the batter if you like.

Alternatives to a Harry Potter Birthday Cake

Alternatives to a Harry Potter Birthday Cake

If you don’t have the time to make a full-blown Harry Potter birthday cake or you want to add a few extra treats, we’ve got you covered. Below are some of our favorite birthday cake alternatives.

These are great for a Harry Potter-style buffet or as party favors. There’s even a savory option for those who can’t or don’t want to have too many sweet treats.

Harry Potter Cupcakes

Harry Potter Cupcakes

You can easily make Harry Potter cupcakes using our basic cake recipe above. This will yield 24 yummy cupcakes, which are great for sharing or distributing as party favors.

The concept is much the same as with cookies: frost them using your favorite buttercream and add Harry Potter symbols made of sugarpaste. The lightning scar, wands, brooms, the golden snitch, etc all make for great miniature fondant ornaments.

Harry Potter Cookies

A Tasty Alternative: Harry Potter Cookies

Harry Potter cookies are easily made using some of the many cookie cutters available online. Alternatively, you can keep it simple by making round cookies of your choice.

Frost them with deep red icing and draw Harry Potter symbols in yellow sugarpaste. The Deathly Hallows symbol is easy to replicate, as is the iconic 9 ¾. You can also draw some glasses with a little scar over one side. There are no limits to your imagination when it comes to these.

Savory ‘Howlers’

If you remember the angry letters Harry Potter and his friends sometimes received at Hogwarts, this is them but in pastry form. To make your howlers, use readymade pie crust or filo pastry.

Cut out squares roughly 7×7” in size, add ham and cheese to the center, and fold into a closed letter shape.

Next, brush them with egg yolks and bake according to package instructions. Decorate using edible markers or food coloring.

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