Hermione Granger Cake

I wanted to make a quick Harry Potter themed cake and couldn't find one I liked so I made m own. I knew I wanted the inside to be alternating house colors and finally decided on Hermione Granger based on a friend's recommendation, plus she's fantastic! I based this cake off of the design of a Harry Potter bookmark set I have so it is a more stylized version of Hermione.

For the Cakes

• 2 bowls
• 2 round cake pans- mine are 9" but this will probably work better with an 8" or 7"
• 1 white box cake mix- yellow will also work for Hufflepuff or Gryffindor
• Ingredients for box mix- in my case 3 whole eggs, 1 cup water and 1/2 cup of oil
• Food coloring- I used red yellow and orange to get the gryffindor colors how I wanted

You will also need something to mix the mix, I like to have a non stick spatula to get all the batter out of the bowl, a large knife and a measuring cup.

Decorating (this is what I used for Hermione)

• 3 smaller bowls
• 1 can of white frosting or a batch of homemade frosting
• red, orange, yellow and brown food coloring
• two peppermint patties
• a knife

For Harry I would recommend differently shaped pretzels for his glasses, whoppers/junior mints or a similarly sized candy for his eyes, black food coloring to dye his hair and thin licorice or broken pretzel twigs for his scar

For Ron swap the brown of Hermione's hair for orange and chocolate chips or m&ms for his freckles

Combine all your ingredients and mix it up as directed on the box mix you choose. When cracking eggs I like to crack them into my measuring cup to make sure I don't get egg shells in the cake and I also like to get rid of the little white gobs attached to the yolk. I do this by separating my egg whites and then "cutting" the whit part off with the egg shells. I've found sometimes when I leave these in the cake there are small chewy bits in the cake and I do not like that.

Once your cake is mixed together split the mix evenly into two bowls. These will be for the two different colors. Add a generous amount of food coloring, I think I used at least three times as much as pictured but I wanted to start small. For the Gryffindor gold I ended up adding a little orange to the yellow. For the red I ended up needing a more potent dye than the one pictured(see frosting pictures for the one I ended up using). For a Slytherin or Ravenclaw cake I would recommend using the egg white recipe instead of whole eggs for white cake. This will give you less of a yellow tinge. Once your cake batters are mixed to the colors you want pour them into two round baking pans, I think a 7" would work best. The smaller the pan the thicker your cakes will be and the easier to cut them.

Cook your cakes for the time specified on your cake mix- for me that is 30min.

If making this cake for a bigger crowd make a batch of each color (four cakes, two of each color) and layer those instead of cutting in half.

Once your cakes are done in the oven and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean flip your cakes onto a flat movable surface, I used a cutting board but a cookie sheet or a couple plates would work too. Store the cakes in the fridge of freezer until chilled, I left mine in for about an hour while I went on a walk. Cooling the cakes will help to cut them.

Once cooled lay the cakes flat and cut in half so you have two thin round cakes. Layer these cakes alternating colors*. Since the tops of mine raised quite a bit in the middle I put my two bottom pieces together and put the top pieces on top with their flat sides together.

*See footnote in next step before stacking

Gather your frosting supplies. These are one can(or batch) of frosting, three small bowls-or in my case ramekins, food coloring for your character's house and hair, some form of candy for facial features-mint patties and a couple knives.

Split your frosting into fourths. I did not need nearly as much as I portioned out for red and yellow, about half that much would've been fine and more white would've been good. For Hermione color one bowl Red, one Gold and one Brown. You will want a little more brown than red and gold.

Start* by frosting as much of your cake as you can with a base white. Leave the part your hair will cover for last in case you run out. Make sure to frost the sides as well, this will help fill in the gaps between the cake layers. To frost the sides I gather a small gob on my knife about half way up the knife blade and run it around the sides.

*In hind sight I meant to frost between each layer and this would have evened the gaps a little more but I completely forgot to do that, so if you would like more defined layers and more frosting in your cake, while stacking cake layers apply a layer for frosting to the top of each layer then continue.

For the scarf use a toothpick to mark your stripes. I split mine into twelve (split in half, half again and then thirds). This will help keep your scarf stripes more even.

Frost your lighter color first. Use the same technique as frosting the sides white but frost the gob back and forth within the lines until the frosting is smooth. See pictures for help. I did all of my lighter color, skipping a spot so every other is gold. This lets the darker color cover any smudges and ensures the darker doesn't get accidentally dragged through the lighter. Next frost all the darker color in the same manner, filling in the spaces between the lighter colors. If you miss a spot in your initial swipe just clean your knife off, scoop just enough to cover that spot, touch it up and do another swipe across that stripe to even it.

For the hair use a cleanish knife, if you scrape the brown frosting knife off that'll work fine, to draw the outline of your hair. I think I should've left more face but since Hermione has a lot of hair I figured its okay. Once you've drawn the hair in how you like frost inside it with our knife. Make sure to get up to the scarf around the edge. For the eyes I ended up cutting circles out of some peppermint patties. I had intended to use the whole mints but since I frosted so much hair I didn't have enough room and had to cut them down. I also used a mint for the mouth, once I had cut the circles for the eyes the remainder looked kind of like a smile and I decided it looked pretty similar to the bookmark I based it off of. You could also use m&ms or junior mints for her eyes and licorice for her mouth but I did not have any.

If you wanted to add a little more to it you could make a few cupcakes to extend the scarf out below her face.