17 Wonderful Harry Potter Cake Ideas For Beginner And Pro Bakers.

Looking for Harry Potter Cake Ideas? Here, you’ll find 17 Wonderful Harry Potter cake ideas perfect for a birthday, including easy designs with instructions to recreate them. If you’re looking for inspiration to place an order with your local baker, or you want to recreate one of these cakes yourself, you’re in the perfect place.

How to find a Harry Potter cake idea suited to your cake-decorating level?

I’ve come up with a system. The cake ideas are presented to you according to their level of difficulty. There are three categories :

What Are Beginner Cake Ideas?

These are easy cake ideas. If you’ve never decorated a cake before (or only did it once or twice), these are the cakes that you should pay attention to.

• What you’ll find: Beautiful cake ideas that only require basic cake decorating techniques. This is a great place to start your journey.

What Are Intermediate Cake Ideas?

Low Intermediate Baker: If you are confident that you’ve mastered the cake decorating basics, such as how to smooth a cake, but feel like you still have a lot of techniques to learn apart from this foundation, this category is perfect for you.

• What you’ll find: Harry Potter cake ideas that require both basic decorating skills and one or two techniques that are a little bit more advanced. This is a great place to grow your cake decorating skills.

High Intermediate Baker: If you’ve mastered both basic techniques and several more advanced cake decorating techniques, these cake ideas are made for you.

• What you’ll find: Stunning cake ideas that can be fairly challenging, but are a great place to get even better than you already are.

What Are Advanced Cake Ideas?

If you consider yourself an experienced cake decorator and have mastered most of the decorating techniques, including the use of fondant, then this is the perfect place for you.

• What you’ll find: Showstopping and challenging cake ideas, perfect to sharpen and maintain your skills.

The Grading System

Finally, I’ve also assigned a grade of difficulty to each cake inspiration: 1/5 being the easiest design and 5/5 being the hardest. The goal is to make the ranking the most accurate possible. You will find this to be particularly helpful if you happen to fall in the Beginner or the Intermediate Cake Ideas categories.

Growth Tip : This list is great a place to set goals about your cake decorating skills. Pin this post and come back later to tell us how far you’ve come in your cake decorating journey !

How to recreate these Harry Potter cake ideas?

What cake recipe should you use to make your perfect cake come true?

To recreate these cake ideas, you will need a trustworthy cake recipe. You have several options.

Adapt your favorite cake recipe.

There are a lot of ways to adapt a cake recipe. You mainly have four options to tweak your favorite recipe :

• You could change the flavor of your cake recipe: with citrus zest, the essence of your choice, or turn it into a chocolate or carrot cake for example.
• You could add a filling: a caramel sauce, a homemade flavored whipped cream, ganache, or buttercream.
• You could also add some texture: oreo bits, crumble crumbs, nuts, or fresh fruit for example.
• Finally, you could personalize your frosting.

Be careful, if you’re a beginner baker, having to figure out both your cake design and creating a new cake recipe could be overwhelming. Therefore, I always recommend taking your learning journey one step at a time.

Look for a cake recipe.

Where? You can ask friends, or family or simply look on the internet. You have to keep two things in mind though :

• The recipe has to be suitable for cake decorating, especially for cakes that require stacking or carving (intermediate and advanced cake ideas).
• Once again, if you’re a beginner baker, be careful not to put too much on your plate and choose a recipe suited to your current level.

Use my cake recipe recommendation.

Finally, you could try the delicious recipe I recommend. I firmly believe everyone should have a trustworthy chocolate cake recipe, and my chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting is both beginner-friendly and perfect for cake decorating. I’m sure you’ll love it.

What you will love about this recipe :

• It has a perfect chocolate flavor.
• It’s a really easy recipe, perfect for beginners.
• It has a great texture.

How to follow the instructions of the designs.

For the cake designs in the beginner category: I’ll provide written instructions on how to recreate the cake idea presented to you. Don’t hesitate to watch video tutorials about the basic techniques such as how to smooth a cake.

For the designs in the intermediate category: I’ll provide some guidance on how to perform the more complicated techniques.

For the advanced category: you are an experienced baker, at this point, and you will find great opportunities to put this experience to use. To be completely honest, I cannot make myself several cake ideas from the advanced category, so trust your abilities and go for it.

Find the perfect Harry Potter cake idea for your baking skills.

Growth Tip : If you aim to get better at cake decorating, you should choose a cake idea that feels sligthly above your current cake decorating level. Get out of your comfort zone !

Harry Potter Cake Ideas Perfect for Beginner Bakers

Here, you’ll find 3 easy Harry Potter cake ideas perfect for beginner bakers.

Golden Snitch Cake

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Difficulty Level: 1/5.

This is the perfect beginner Harry Potter cake. It only requires the most basic technique (frosting a cake) while still looking amazing.

What you will need :

• Enough frosting to cover your cake.
• Harry Potter-themed cake toppers.
• DIY edible golden paint
• A small brush for the edible paint
• Edible golden pearls

How to recreate this cake?

1. First, you must crumb-coat the cake to avoid any crumbs in your final design. Apply a thin and even coat of frosting with your offset spatula all around your cake.
2. Smooth it with your bench scraper, holding it at a 45-degree angle on the cake while spinning your turntable. Your bench scraper isn’t supposed to move, only turn the table.
3. It doesn’t have to be perfect as it only is the first coat. Chill the cake 20 to 30 minutes in the fridge (until your frosting sets).
4. Then, apply a thicker coat of frosting and repeat the smoothing operation. Fill in any gaps and smooth the cake again. Repeat this operation until the cake looks smooth enough for you. Here, you’ll find a video tutorial of the covering process, if needed.
5. Chill your cake in the fridge for 30 minutes or until your buttercream cover sets.
6. Once your buttercream is set, simply dip your brush in your golden edible paint, and create splatter by pulling back on the bristles with your fingers and releasing it. Repeat until satisfied with the results.
7. Finally, use a knife warmed with water to get sharp edges on your cake and place your cake toppers and edible pearls.

What you’ve learned :

Covering a cake with buttercream is the most basic technique a cake decorator has to master. Once they do, they can create beautiful cake ideas like this one.

Girly Harry Potter Cake.

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Difficulty Level: 1,5/5.

You can easily make any Harry Potter cake more or less girly by playing with its colors.

What you will need:

• Enough frosting to cover your cake
• Harry Potter themed cake toppers.
• DIY edible golden paint.
• A piping bag with an open star piping tip (such as the 1M by Wilton)
• Edible pearls

How to recreate this cake?

1. First, crumb coat, cover, and decorate your cake with your edible gold paint as explained in the previous design.
2. Next, to recreate the buttercream rose swirls, pipe your buttercream using your open star piping tip and holding your piping bag to a 90° angle from the cake. Then, make a slow circular movement while piping as shown in this beginner buttercream rose swirl tutorial. Once you’re satisfied with your swirl’s size stop piping and slowly pull your piping bag away.
3. I always recommend practicing on parchment paper until you’re confident enough to do it on your actual cake.
4. Finally, place your cake toppers and edible pearls.

What you’ve learned :

Piping rose swirls is another basic cake decorating technique, that will take your cake design to a new level.

Using the same techniques but switching your piping tips can give a really interesting look to your cake design.

If you’re looking for more easy birthday cake ideas you can check out my other cake ideas lists for teens or for kids.

Harry Potter Cake Ideas for Intermediate Bakers

Here, you’ll find 10 Harry Potter cake ideas perfect for intermediate bakers.

Slytherin Cake

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Difficulty Level: 2,5/5 (Low-Intermediate)

You could also embrace the cunning spirit of Slytherin with this Slytherin Cake, with its green concrete buttercream and silver detailing, it’ll cast a delicious spell on your celebration.

A little guidance

This “concrete buttercream” isn’t hard to recreate, you simply have to apply roughly two colors to your cake before smoothing it. Here, you’ll find a quick video tutorial made by Sugar and Sparrow.

Hermione Vintage Cake

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Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)

This is the perfect for Hermione fans. You can easily personalize it by switching the colors.

A little guidance

To recreate this cake you’ll need to be able to pipe shell buttercream borders with an open star nozzle. This design is also a great example of how you can use toys and figurines as cake toppers.

Striped Harry Potter Cake

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Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)

If you like vibrant colors, stripes are always an easy way to elevate the look of a cake.

A little guidance

Once your buttercream cover has set in the fridge, simply apply a layer of buttercream around the bottom half of your cake. Then, use a cake comb to create ridges as shown in this striped cake tutorial, and let it set in the fridge. Next, fill them with your second color of buttercream. Smooth your cake until neat buttercream stripes are revealed.

Harry Potter Mini Cakes

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Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)

Creating this kind of cake is the perfect idea if you don’t want to bother with a tiered cake and want different cake flavors, or if you like little cakes more than big ones (as I personally do).

A little guidance

And, it doesn’t even require you to be an artist. All you have to do is a buttercream transfer. Simply draw your design on a sheet of parchment paper following a guide that you put underneath it. Then, once it has set in the fridge, simply stick it on your cake. Finally, overline the drawing and add the details. Here’s a video tutorial of a buttercream transfer to make the process easier.

Cute Harry Potter Cake

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Difficulty Level: 3/5 (Intermediate)

This cute Harry Potter cake would be perfectly suited for a kid’s birthday.

A little guidance

When using fondant to create decorative elements on your cake most of the time you don’t have the perfect cookie cutter, and it’s perfectly fine. You can print or draw paper patterns that you’ll follow as a guide to cut each fondant piece. Once you do you’ll be able to create every single design that crosses your mind.

Harry Potter Sheet Cake

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Difficulty level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)

Sheet cakes are a great idea when you’re hosting a big party, but don’t want to make a tiered cake. So if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll love this Harry Potter sheet cake.

A little guidance

Here the buttercream transfer will be handy once again. Once it’s done, you can add texture and overline your buttercream design to give it more character.

Gryffindor Cake

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Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)

If you’re a Gryffindor supporter, this is the perfect cake idea for you.

A little guidance

To get this beautiful layered buttercream, simply apply your first buttercream layer around the 2 bottom thirds of your cake, let it set in the fridge, and repeat the process on the bottom two-thirds of the previous buttercream layer. Next, you can follow this tutorial to recreate the Harry Potter fondant cake toppers.

Golden Harry Potter Cake

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Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)

With its elegant golden elements, this cake might be more suited to teens. It’ll remind your guests of the iconic Hogwarts halls.

A little guidance

Silicon molds for fondant are an easy way to elevate your cake design’s look. If you’ve never used them before you can follow this silicon mold tutorial and color your elements with DIY edible golden paint.

Harry Potter Doodle Cake

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Difficulty Level: 3,5/5 (High-Intermediate)

With this cake, you’ll be able to capture the essence of Harry Potter, using the doodles of the most iconic staples of the series.

A little guidance

Simplicity doesn’t mean easy. There’s no secret for this design, it will require quite some practice on parchment paper if you’re not used to piping, especially for the golden snitch. You can use the buttercream transfer method for the flat buttercream elements.

Velvet Harry Potter Cake

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Difficulty Level: 4/5

With its velvety texture and its Harry Potter cake topper, this cake is probably the most elegant one on the list.

A little guidance

When making tiered cakes, you have to pay extra attention to the structure of the cake. Therefore, you should always use a sturdy cake board for each tier. You should also support the bottom tier with dowel rods or bubble tea straws cut to the height of the cake. Finally, you should ensure each tier is leveled before stacking them.

Harry Potter Cake Ideas for Advanced Bakers

These 4 Harry Potter cake ideas will be perfectly suited to experienced cake decorators.

Harry Potter’s Uniform Cake

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Difficulty level: 5/5

Elevate your table to wizarding heights with this stunning Harry Potter cake idea and its beautiful details capturing the essence of the series.

Spell’s Book Cake

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Difficulty Level: 5/5

Transport your guests to the enchanting world of Harry Potter with these very realistic Spell’s Books cakes that’ll create unforgettable magical moments.

Tiered Harry Potter Cake

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Difficulty Level: 5/5

Turn your celebration into a magical moment with this cake design that brings all the staples from the series.

Did you enjoy these Harry Potter cake inspirations? Sharing is caring!

Please let me know in the comments and/or tag me on Instagram @theperfectcakeidea. I’d love to see your creations. And, don’t forget to pin this post so you can come back to it.

Pin this post and come back to it later.