Ten Points to Gryffindor! Quidditch Pitch Birthday Cake

This year was my little sister's 21st birthday! She's a proper grown up now.... although she'll always be little in my mind. I think every big sister feels the same way, no matter how old their little sister gets.

So for this very special birthday, I thought I'd do a very special cake. She loves Harry Potter, and so I thought I'd make her a Quidditch pitch cake. For people who aren't Harry Potter fans, Quidditch is a team sport where the players fly broom sticks and try to throw a ball, called a Quaffle, through their opponents hoops to score points. However, they have to avoid being hit by a Bludger, which is a ball that's deliberately hit at players of the opposite team to dismount them from their broomsticks. The winner of the game is the team that has the most points by full time, and if your team catches the third and most important ball, the Golden Snitch, you get an extra 150 points. The Snitch flies around the pitch of its own accord, and can only be caught by a special teammate called a Seeker.

I'm not a big Harry Potter person, I read all the books and watched all the movies once each and that was enough for me, but my sister is mad for it. So much so that by coincidence we all bought Harry Potter themed presents for her without planning it ahead of time.

Her birthday coincided with my parents' 35th wedding anniversary weekend, so we had a big family celebration; all told there were 12 people, including me, at the party, so I needed a big cake! This cake used half a dozen eggs, and three quarters of a pound of flour and sugar. There was cake leftover after dinner, but I always like to make a cake big enough to be enjoyed the next day too.

I made two 10 by 8 inch (25 by 20 centimetre) rectangular cakes, trimmed off the domes (I didn't have much of a dome on either cake), and sandwiched them together with chocolate buttercream. I crumb coated the cake, allowed it to set in the fridge for 30 minutes before proceeding with decorating.

While I was baking the cakes, I also baked some green tinted shortbread and some plain shortbread to crumble later for decoration. I used biscuits instead of coconut because my sister doesn't like coconut, however if that's not an issue you can just colour some and use that instead.

I made an oval shaped stencil out of non-stick baking paper, and I also made one circular and two semicircular masks. I coated the sides of the cake with a sheer layer of icing before packing a mixture of sugar strands and hundred and thousands (which to my American readers are simply tiny ball-shaped sprinkles) onto all four sides.

I coated the top in a sheery coating of icing before setting down my oval stencil. I then placed the circular mask in the centre, and the semicircular masks on either narrow end. I sprinkled on crushed green biscuits even inside the stencil, then removed the masks and filled in the gaps with plain crushed biscuits. I removed the stencil, then piped on some remaining icing into all the un-biscuited areas.

I piped on some simple glacé icing to represent the white grass paint that marks out the different parts of the field.

 To make the golden snitch, I made a cake truffle out of the dome trimmings and some icing, rolled it into a ball, and rolled it round some gold lustre dust. I allowed it to set and crust completely in the fridge.

I made some little white card wings and stuck them in the top, and also used paper straws and loops of white card to make the hoops.

I was extremely pleased with the results of this cake. The cake itself was fluffy and delicious, and the icing was thick and creamy. But my favourite thing about it was the look on my sister's face when she saw it!

Two novelty cake in one year?! I think I might be getting the taste for novelty cakes after all these years....