Harry Potter and the Fanciful Fondant Phoenix

I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I love what the series did for kids’ reading. I love the fandom. I love JK Rowling. Most of all, and obviously, I love the stories. I’ve been planning to have a Harry Potter cake for my birthday for a while now. I debated doing it for my 30th, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to do something more girly and traditional. Then I thought, “Why not have girly and Harry Potter?” So when you all voted for the “Girly Harry Potter” cake in the poll, I was psyched!!

I knew I wanted Fawkes (the phoenix in Dumbledore’s office) to be on the cake, so I started with that and went from there.

I drew up some plans and decided to use a peacock as inspiration because I was trying to keep things really feminine and pretty, and I think peacocks are gorgeous. I started out with a sort of basic, pretty cake then added the phoenix to it. I loved the look of it, but I didn’t think it seemed very “Harry Potter-esque” so I doodled some other little HP elements and got to work.

I’m really thrilled with how it turned out!! It’s very, very girly, but still completely obviously Harry Potter themed!

You can’t tell by the photo, but the cake is actually small in size. The bottom tier is six inches round, while the top is four inches.

Most of the following photos are of the creation and assembly of the cake and it’s various elements, so I’m pretty much gonna let them speak for themselves. I’ll be back a little later, though.

Shaping Fawkes’ body.

For Fawkes’ wings, I decided to do something a little more abstract. I cut small strips of fondant in orange, yellow, and red then curled them around toothpicks to dry. Once they dried, I used tiny amounts of water to “glue” them to Fawkes’ body.

I added a little feather and swirls on top of his head before adding a beak and eyes to Fawkes’ face.

The cake – I made a lemon cake with lemon cream frosting…I’ll post the recipe soon! Not my smoothest fondant job, but this was only my fourth or fifth time using fondant, so I’m quite proud of it.

The Phoenix has landed!

I added lots of other little HP elements to make the cake more magical.

Once all of the HP elements were in place, I added lots and lots of pretty little flowers to the whole cake.

The top of Fawkes’ tail is very similar to the top of his head, with some small feathers, accented by tiny curls of fondant.

Of course I had to have a broomstick. I went for the look of the Nimbus 2000 from the first film and wrapped a Gryffindor scarf around it.

Next I added potion bottles (bonus points if you can guess the name of each potion!). I really think that if I actually attended Hogwarts, Potions would be my favorite class.

My own little golden snitch.

And, of course, the Sorting Hat. This might just be my favorite element (besides Fawkes). It was really fun to model out of the fondant and I love the way it turned out.

These last pictures are my favorite. They really show off my absolute favorite part of the cake: Fawkes and his tail.

Phoenixes burst into flames when they die and are reborn again from the ashes. I wanted to bring that feeling of fire to my Fawkes, so I hand cut dozens of feathers from shades of red, orange, and yellow to represent fire. The tail feathers are also pointed on each end to resembles flames.

Fawkes looks very handsome and stately atop my cake from the front…

…but as you turn the cake, you really get a fiery surprise.

I really wanted his tail to be full, warm, and beautiful, so I had it drop down and wrap around the entire side of the cake.

I’m thrilled with the end result, and I now want a real phoenix. To be my pet. Forever.

All in all, I think I did a good job creating the cake that I had on paper…which shocked the heck out of me. I love it. I love love love it!! I think I’ll retire from cake making at this point because I don’t think I’ll ever make a cake that I love this much again (well, I doubt I’ll retire…I love it too much).

I hope you had fun checking out my girly Harry Potter themed birthday cake! Have a great weekend, friends!

P.S. Useless trivia- according to JK Rowling’s timeline of events for the Harry Potter series, Harry was also born in 1980, so he’ll be turning 30 this July!

Designed and made by Darla

Tagged as: birthdays, Cakes, Fawkes, Fondant, Geekery, Harry Potter, Magic, Phoenix, Tiered Cake