Wow!!!
This stunning stained glass Harry Potter cake was made by BunsInTheOven Cupcakery. Sheryl made this for the Harry Potter Themed cake collaboration – Birthday Mischief Managed. Birthday Mischief Managed is a worldwide collaboration of food artists to celebrate J.K. Rowling’s 50th Birthday. The collaboration went live on July 31st, the date of H.K. Rowling’s and Harry Potter’s birthday.
Sheryl’s cake is based on the Prefects Bathroom. From the Harry Potter Wiki:
The Prefects’ Bathroom is a special bathroom on the fifth floor of Hogwarts restricted to use by school Prefects, Head Boys, Head Girls and Quidditch captains. It is located on the fifth floor behind the fourth door to the left of a statue of Boris the Bewildered, which only opens when given the correct password.
The Prefects Bathroom has a gorgeous stained glass window of a mermaid. Sheryl does an amazing job recreating it.
The Harry Potter Wiki explains how the golden egg relates to the Prefects Bathroom better than I could:
After the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, Barty Crouch Jr., disguised as Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, tells Cedric Diggory to open the golden egg that contains the clue for the second task under water. Cedric takes the egg to the prefects’ bathroom and follows Crouch’s advice. Underwater, he can hear the merpeople’s song, but it takes him some time to deduce that it is sung by merpeople, despite the fact that the mermaid in a nearby painting is wide awake. Myrtle Warren, who visits this bathroom sometimes to spy on the prefects, witnesses the scene. Cedric then told Harry, in return for telling him about the first task: dragons.
After the Yule Ball, Cedric Diggory tells Harry Potter to try to solve the riddle of the golden egg while taking a bath in the prefects’ bathroom. He also gives him the current password, which is “pine fresh“. Harry follows his advice in the night of 21 January, 1995. Awed as he is by the bathroom, he has no idea at first how a bath is going to help him solve the egg’s clue. He fills the pool with water and bubble bath from several taps, takes a short swim and opens the egg. As usual, it emits a loud, wailing noise and he closes it quickly. Moaning Myrtle reveals her presence and tells him to open the egg under water, like Cedric did. To Myrtle’s delight, Harry solves the clue much faster than Cedric.
There is a birthday cake and the works “Happy B’Day JKR” hidden on the golden egg. I love that Sheryl hid an Easter Egg on an egg!
Over on the BunsInTheOven Cupcakery Facebook Pages, Sheryl shared behind the scenes information on how she made this stunning cake.
Here are pictures of the golden egg before and after. This is a dummy egg covered in fondant. The markings and details are etched with a dresden tool and toothpick and then painted with gold dust mixed with alcohol. Black dust mixed with alcohol is painted on the crevices to achieve an aged look.
After figuring out the design, the image is traced onto the cake using wax paper transfer method. Wax paper transfer method involves tracing the design onto wax paper and then transferring the traced design on the wax paper to the cake.
Sheryl used a combination of a few brands of water based edible colors (Wilton, Americolor & HOI house brand) to get the shades that she wanted. The colors were diluted with a bit of water and the design painted in sections and allowed to dry so that there were less chances of accidental smudging. It took Sheryl about a day and a half to get to the stage in the last photo.
Sheryl finished filling in the sections. She than painted the outlines.
I love these in process photographs because it shows how beautiful the final cake was and how much detailed work went into it.
