Having recently devoured the Harry Potter book series, this year Blythe requested a Hedwig (the owl) birthday cake. It’s been a minute since I watched the movies, so at first I thought she meant Hagrid. But she reminded me that Hedwig was Harry’s owl. How fitting that she was gifted to him on his eleventh birthday!
As I normally do, I took to Pinterest for inspiration. There have been some pretty elaborate versions of this cake made! But I chose to keep things much simpler – NO FONDANT, thanks very much – and also asked the birthday girl to show me her vision.
This is what she came up with.
I started with the same vanilla cake recipe used for the cake I made for her actual birthday. Love this recipe as it only requires one bowl like these cookies. It makes two nine inch round cakes, which I let cool for about 20-30 minutes.
Then I added a base layer of buttercream frosting to the two cakes stacked and chilled in our deep freezer for about 10-15 minutes.
After the frosting had time to set, I added another layer of it all around the cake.
Then it was time to start piping some “feathers”. Originally I had thought Blythe wanted the feathers on the bottom of the cake, so I had it oriented like this.
But after she came over to inspect it, she asked me why it was upside down and said that it made it look like Hedwig had a beard. My bad. No beard for a lady owl!
This is how she turned out.
Personally, I think it looks more like a hedgehog, but Blythe and her friends approved, so I’m happy. Plus the cake, like the novel series, has already been devoured!
What do you think? Is this a cute owl or angry hedgehog?
