When I made the decision to make a Harry Potter cake, I said to myself – well, self, you had better do this thing right. I set out to make a photo-realistic action pose based on Daniel Radcliffe’s portrayal of our beloved Harry, and you know what? I nailed it. You can’t deny that I nailed it.
I have a literary boner for the Harry Potter series. So much so, that if someone starts a conversation about HP, I have to excuse myself. If I don’t, I will, within minutes, expose myself as a terrible conversationist. When it comes to small talk, I am inept. In the moment, I can’t even begin to think of a relevant question. I’ll usually locate an object in our immediate area, and express my approval or disapproval. That’s my go-to. “Your shoes are brown, and I like that about them,” “That lamp is like, it’s super bright. Must be at least a hundred watt bulb,” “Oh my god, rain, I hate it, it makes my clothes wet,” “So were you born with freckles? Or what?”
My point is, HP is a topic that I am comfortable talking about, and I’ll often cling to it in lieu of attempting traditional conversation. That being said, let me talk about it for a little while.
Harry Potter has been a part of my life since 7th grade. I went to all the midnight book sales, I’ve read each book multiple times. The first book was released in the US in the Fall of 1998, when I was just shy of 11 years old – the age at which I’d start my first year at Hogwarts. Yes. My first year. I’m blurring the lines of reality, try to keep up. That first book was written for an 11 year old kid. The second, a 12 year old. By the time the last book came out, I was 19, and the subject matter had matured at pretty much the same rate as me. Harry was a snotty, angry, pubescent boy in the 5th book. I was 16. Shit was relevant.
See what’s happening, here? I could talk for hours about how I KNEW Snape wasn’t a bad guy. I could go on for days about the terrible mistake it was to cast Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. But I won’t. Because you’re bored.
As I was saying before, you’ll notice that this cake is indistinguishable from a still shot of a Quidditch scene from one of the movies. It’s that good. Right down to those beautiful baby greens. I especially enjoy how spindly his arm is, in relation to his fat head.
I probably spent most of the time on the hair. That was annoying. There’s this thing called an Extruder – it’s a tool used to push clay through patterned holes. Think about that play-doh toy where you crank the thing and make play-doh hair push out in long strands and then get bored to a point where you’re just sitting on the floor, smelling it. That’s an Extruder. And at the time of this cake construction, I did not own one yet. So I had to make the strands by hand. An extruder would have cut my work time in half, and it also would have looked cleaner. Hindsight.
I had big dumb plans for the glasses that involved a wire structure. I made the wire structure, was quite pleased with it, and when it came to implementation, everything went to shit. So I ended up just using straight-up fondant, which worked well enough.
As I made each individual strand of hair, I was able to reflect on the cultural significance of HP. I thought about how many hours of my life I’ve spent inside the world that JK Rowling created, how many hours I’ve spent wishing it were real, and that I could be a part of it. After a while I started thinking about well maybe if Harry were to read a book about my life, he would wish he could swap lives with me.
For example: How would Harry deal with the arrival of a new niece?
And Ron – how would he approach the obstacle of sort of actively trying to eat better and exercise more?
I imagine Hermione would have no trouble mastering something like crochet – I’ve taken it up recently and lord knows I wouldn’t be able to whip up this tiny scarf
And He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, how would he manage his finances? Surely the current state of the economy and my laughable salary would rival his struggle for immortality.
Ok, so, yeah. Fine. Not interesting. Any excuse to draw Voldemort in khaki slacks.
We ate Harry’s face one quiet evening, an evening filled with ice cream and Skip Bo. It was magical.
See what I did there.
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