Coolest Snape Birthday Cake

by Melissa R
(Sleepy Hollow, NY, USA)

Homemade Snape Birthday Cake

It was my husband's birthday last week, but he had to work all weekend, so we postponed the celebration. I wanted to make it special, since he had such a miserable birthday. He loves Harry Potter, and especially Snape, so I decided to make a Snape birthday cake.

The cake itself was two layers of devil's food cake, cut into four layers. I spread chocolate ganache (chocolate whipped cream recipe from The Cake Bible) in between the layers, and then frosted the whole cake with basic white buttercream.

I found the picture of Snape on the internet, printed it out and cut it out. I traced the shape onto the top of the cake with a toothpick. I found the font (Parseltongue) on mugglenet.com, and printed out the message for a reference. I copied the message roughly with a toothpick as a guide.

Using black buttercream and a pastry bag, I outlined and filled in the picture of Snape, and wrote out the message. Copying the font took me the longest time. I used a leaf tip to pipe a border around the top edge which could either be leaves or green snake tongues, using dark green buttercream (Slytherin color!). I also used a round tip to make squiggly snakes around the sides of the cake, adding black eyes and red tongues.

Needless to say, my husband got a big kick out of Snape's snide appearance!