Saturday, February 28, 2009

Hagrid's Cake and Pumpkin Juice


I happened to have canned pumpkin pie mix which was just canned pumpkin with spices. I added the whole can of pumpkin to 1 can frozen apple juice plus 2 cans water and quickly blended it with my stick blender with a touch of red and yellow food coloring. The day of the party I added another can of frozen apple juice, ice and a bit of water to taste. I left it a bit sweet to allow for the melting ice. I had planned to use dry ice to give the bubbling caudron effect but we didn't have time to get it that day in part due to to an uninvited surprise visitor (who should have offered to go get the ice instead of expecting us to chit-chat with him when we were obviously very busy setting up the party of a lifetime and believe me I hinted). You can add more or less apple juice to taste. Surprisingly it was not bad. Apple juice with a hint of pumpkin pie flavor. However I really served it for the novelty. I wouldn't expect it to be any kid's favorite drink. But they did drink some.


I already had the cauldron (I got at the Goodwill.) I washed it really well beforehand.

It was Evie's idea to make a Hagrid cake. When he comes to get Harry and take him to Hogwart's it is Harry's 11th birthday and Hagrid brings Harry a chocolate cake that he made himself. I liked this idea because I could hardly screw up a messy looking cake. I bought a cake box from the Home Cake Decorating store on Roosevelt. They had tubes of Wilton ready made Kelly green icing. For $.25 I bought a ring that would attach a cake tip directly to the tube no piping bag required.


I admit I went for easy and used Pillsbury Devil's food cake mix. To get height for each layer, I used an entire cake mix for each of the two 9" pans.

I iced it with canned frosting as sloppily as I could and then piped the lettering using my left hand to make it look a little shaky. I used a picture I took of Hagrid's cake on the screen from the Sorcerer's Stone as a guide for the lettering.
The cakes side-by-side. The photo on the left was taken by pausing the movie on the scene. I think it looked pretty close. You can see there is a line that kind of cuts through movie cake which I was able to duplicate with a knife.
When I brought out the cake I told the kids Hagrid dropped the cake off earlier. I left it in the box so it would be just the same. They were all like, "Reeeaaalllllly?" It was too cute!!!

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