Real Parties: A Harry Potter Extravaganza--Part 1, the Dessert Table

Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

I was delighted and honored to get to assist my friend Paulette throw a Harry Potter birthday party for her 11 year old daughter, Mikayla. A few weeks before the party, we got together for a brainstorming session, and it sent something like this:

Paulette: So here are alltheideas I have for the games, decor, etc..
Me: Sounds amazing! So...um...what exactly are we supposed to be brainstorming when you already have an incredible party planned?

Paulette already had an astoundingly fun and well thought out party already in mind, but she graciously let me jump in and have fun helping with the dessert table. Paulette is a great cake decorator already, so we arranged cake play-dates. The girls played and had a great time, the moms played and had a great time, and in the end, we had a fabulous sweets display that could rival Honeydukes Sweet Shop any day.
 


This cake had more than its fair share of mishaps. Let me just say that making those stacked book cakes turns out to be way harder than it looks. We had to switch our design concept around on the fly the morning we started decorating based on theamountof fondant that we'd made, too. But I ended up loving having the twoseparatecakes on two different levels. And we managed to fool a few people into thinking that the stacked books on the bottom were real books (at least for a moment), so I consider that a job well done!

Harry Potter Party Dessert Table

The whole dessert table, before the owl arrived with one of the guests. The wooden desk on the table (holding the open book cake) is actually a table designed to hold dog food bowls (very well cleaned, of course!). And I recycled the rustic wooden cake stand I made for the Cornish fairy partyto act as a perch for the stuffed owl prop. The container for the Berti Botts Every Flavor Beans came from the stash I bought for our annual gingerbread house decorating party. The tablecloths are the same purple velvet curtains I used at the Sugar Plum Fairy party. I love recycling and finding uses for things already in the house!

 
You can hardly tell that I broke the quill while I was trying to paint it, and had to glue it back together with royal icing!
Golden snitch cake pops

One of my favorite elements on the dessert table was the tray of golden snitch cake pops. They were a little fussy to make, but I loved the way they turned out!

Acid Pops from the Harry Potter Birthday Party

Actually, the golden snitch pops and the acid pops ended up living on the beverage table. We made too many sweets to fit on just one of the four foot tables we were using. ;-)

Chocolate covered popcorn.

My favorite item on the dessert table (at least to eat!) was the chocolate covered popcorn, also known as a cauldron full of troll bogeys. This is a good shot of the faux wax seals I made for the party. I originally made them for the scroll invitations (you can see one next to the open book cake), but I forgot to put them in my daughter's backpack for the at-schoolhand-offon the correct day, and Paulette cleverly improvised wax seals with a crayon, a button, and a glue gun. The seals I made made lovely accents to the dessert table labels.

Harry Potter Cookies


I have very high expectations for myself when I make cookies. I somehow think that they should be as astounding as Sweetopia's, or Sweetapolita's, or SugarBelle's. I conveniently forget that I haven't been honing my cookie skills for very long, that when I was at this stage of experience in cake decorating, I sucked (not that I knew it at the time). I doubt and I worry excessively. But somehow, by the time I put on the finishing touches, I love them. Sure, they're not quite as perfect as those made by the cookie superstars. I have plenty of room for practice and learning. But I'm having fun and getting better each time I try. And when they're done, with a shimmer of super pearl luster spray and disco dust accents, even I am happy. Sparkle distracts beautifully and can cover a lot of mistakes. ;-)

Broomstick cookies

A little hard to tell in this shot, but I used a food coloring marker to draw wood graining on the broomstick handles. It looked fabulous!

 
Owl cookies.
Sorting Hat Cookies
Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, of course!
Chocolate Owl Pops
The girls had a wonderful time helping us make the chocolate owls lollipops and chocolate frogs! It's a great way for kids to help out with the party prep, and a popular sweet on the table.
 
Chocolate Frogs
A little bit of green disco dust gave our chocolate frogs just the right bit of magical sparkle!

Be sure to come back for tomorrow's post with all the details of the fabulous activities and fun had by all at the party.
Nicole Wills, creator of Tikkido

Links on this page may be affiliate links. We may receive a small commission for something you buy through those links, at no additional cost to you.