Sorting Hat Cake

[Whataboutthattthen]

I want to try make a sorting hat cake for my dds birthday. Am not a very accomplished cake/make decorator!!

Any suggestions? Have seen some on utube using Rice Krispies/marshmallow to shape the hat.

She loves chocolate biscuit cake...was thinking would I be able to shape the hat if I used a large icing bag with the chocolate biscuit cake mixture?? Is that crazy?

Hopeful bump

I am a terrible baker... But my sister is excellent and she really rates Pinterest for baking ideas like this. She hasn't done anything Harry Potter related yet but there's bound to be loads.

Amateur overly confident cake decorator here

I wouldn't mess around with rice crispies etc, I think it goes against the point of cake making if it's not cake! I also don't know what you mean by biscuit cake?

I would do what this person does - make some round cakes you can cut into a hat shape, cover with buttercream then brown icing. Sainsbury's stock coloured icing, they might have brown, or you might have to add food colouring to eg. purple fondant icing. The hat is fairly rustic so I think it would be a good first project.

Oooh, I’ve done a Sorting Hat cake! Enthusiastic but definitely amateur baker here, but it did turn out well. Will post more in the morning about what I did. There was definitely a YouTube tutorial involved...

Thanks for the tips...I have looked for brown fondant but did not find any, am pretty useless with fondant..it scares me a bit 

The biscuit cake is just melted chocolate with biscuits broken up and added in, like a rocky road? Not really a cake but popular here

@Wigeon that is an amazing cake...looking forward to hearing how you made it !

Oh my god that cake is amazing!

Thank you! It’s probably the fanciest cake I’ve made!

Right, so I followed these video instructions on Facebook from the Food Network.

So the video shows the cake layers being made of two colours per Hogwarts house (ie red and yellow for Gryffindor), so when you cut into the cake, the slice you get sorts you into a house, which is pretty cool. However, you could obviously just do any kind of sponge cake, eg just chocolate or vanilla. I did 7” cakes but there was still masses to go round.

Then the hat point on top is Rice Krispies modelling - I found a recipe by googling - you add marshmallow and maybe butter, then you can mould it into the hat point shape. It’s very sticky! I think I maybe oiled up my hands before shaping it.

You can get brown colour fondant icing from Hobbycraft or cake decorating shops or probably from eBay/Amazon. I read a tip about brushing it with a very light coat of veg or sunflower oil to get the nice shiny effect - didn’t taste oily. Fortunately because the Sorting Hat itself is all battered, it’s quite forgiving doing the icing (not like a wedding cake).

Let me know if you’ve got any questions, and do post a photo if you do make it, and @ me!

If your dd likes chocolate biscuit cake then make it as a stand/base.
Then make a small sorting hat.
Use sponge.
Buttercream.
Fondant icing.
Buy the icing ready coloured.
Shaping will be the hardest bit.
Cut a shape on paper and use that as a rough guide.
Always cut a little more than you think otherwise you lose the shape when applying the fondant.
Take your time.

I made a Harry Potter cake recently, but decided against a giant sorting hat as sounded too tricky! I did a “sorting cake” instead! Without blowing own trumpet, it was a real hit and very easy.

Make 4 round sponge cakes- any flavour. Then use a small round cutter to cut four holes out of two of the sponges. Don’t cut too close to the edge or it will break. Then stack the layers up using very thin layers of buttercream to sandwich them together- whole sponge on the bottom, then the two layers with the holes, lined up with each other. Then fill the holes with coloured sweets to represent the different houses. I raided the baking section of the supermarket and used a mix of M&Ms, skittles, silver balls, gold stars etc. Then just put the top layer on. When you cut into the cake, the coloured sweets will fall out to show which house you are. If you have someone who will be bothered about getting a particular house, you could just do one bigger hole in the cake and fill with that house. Or, which worked for me, put a toothpick or similar discreetly in the bottom cake to mark where the relevant house colours are!

I covered it all in ganache then modelled a sorting hat, hedwig and wand out of fondant to go on top. It’s also surprisingly easy to make an HP scarf to go round the base of the cake. Happy to send instructions if it would help!

Not sure if any of the above made sense?! Photo shows the filled cake before I put the top layer on and decorated.

@Artesia - that’s a cool idea for a cake! Can you post a pic of the final thing?

Chocolate biscuit cake would be impossible to cut slices of if you made the whole hat out of it. Too solid. but you could make the base/brim from a 1-2cm layer of biscuit cake and then stack layers of sponge for the main hat.

Buy white fondant and tubes of food gel colouring for the colours you want, then you can have a variety of shades. For brown, you can also buy marzipan and mix with cocoa powder plus a little bit of vegetable oil to make chocolate marzipan which makes an excellent cake covering.

Here you go- a bit rough round the edges but I loved it!

Plus another HP cake I made a few years ago, when I had more time, more patience and fewer children to distract me...

Thanks everyone, some great ideas here!! I might need a day off work!

Will post back if I am brave enough

@Artesia - wow, that’s great! I love the finished one with the hidden sweets in the house colours. They both look brill. Do you have a HP mad DC, or adult relative?!

I have several DC, taking it in turns to go through a HP phase. It’s a tradition that they each get to pick the theme for their cake every year and I have to make whatever they ask for, which can be quite a challenge!!!

Ha ha - I do the same re asking the birthday child what they want for their cake, and then I attempt to make it! Started when they were pretty small, and so far I’ve had requests for a dog cake, cat cake, sun cake, chocolate cake with fancy chocolate decorations, turtle cake...The Sorting Hat was a surprise thing, because DD came home some time In the weeks before her birthday and said her teacher’s sister had made her a Sorting Hat cake over the weekend and it was really cool!

DD, who has a birthday coming up soon, says she wants a pineapple upside down cake this year, but with peach as well as pineapple?! I made pineapple upside down for the first time a few months ago, and so it was quite a novelty and she really liked it. So at least that doesn’t involve much complicated decorating. Although maybe I do need to work out how to fancy it up, to make it more birthday cake-ish! Any ideas?!

Thank you for this thread OP, and Artesia thanks so much for the inspiration! Its DD’s birthday today and I was going to make a choc fudge cake, and just decorate with m&m’s and Maltesers. I saw this thread and managed to at least ‘sort’ the m&m’s .