The blog Cake Wrecks took a break from their usual posting of grief-and-trauma-in-fondant-form to post some pretty amazing cakes with birds. You’ll find several geek-themed cakes in this collection, but I had to post this adorable homage to Hedwig.
I can’t imagine cutting into this masterpiece: the detail in the chocolate wand, the academic disciplines written along the book spines, Hedwig’s sweet, loving little face… all sorts of squee.
Sadly, I can’t say very much about the contents of the cake since the original submission appears to come from a Dutch website, and my Dutch is limited to the understanding that mayonnaise is superior to ketchup when it comes to the ultimate french fry condiment. I may have seen something about marzipan in here, but that was never really a mystery. If any Dutch friends are reading this blog and can help with translation in the comments, that would be super mooi.
Language difficulties aside, I thought this taart was entirely too geweldig not to share!
Hallo!
I’ll translate for you!
The books are from ‘biscuit’, that is a cake only made with flour, sugar and eggs. The books are filled with a layer of strawberry buttercream. Hedwig is a cake (as you know it) is filled with a layer of caramel. His wings are made from fondant. She also mentions that the wings of the snitch are made of gelatine.
The original poster mentions she made it for her nephew’s birthday, who thought it was totally the bomb (or some more appropriate youngster’s way of putting that ;)). His mom, her sister in law had initially proposed something sportsy, but she couldn’t think of anything creative and fun, so decided to go for this instead, although Hedwig did put up a bit of a fight to be created (made from tylose-free fondant). Further down the thread she mentions the book titles were handpainted, and all the other decorations are marzipan. Oh, and ‘biscuit’ is (very similar to) sponge cake.
So now we know it isn’t just cute, it must have also been delicious! Thank you both for the help in translation!