What is the one Harry Potter item so iconic that, seen on its own, would instantly shout schoolboy magician to the world? Turns out there are actually quite a lot of them.

In preparation for this cake and wanting to get it just right, I undertook to read the entire 7-book series. I can now achieve at least a 75% score on this quiz, which has really boosted my self-esteem! (Now that you’re on the site, try this one. I found it so impossible that I deemed it necessary to memorize this song in order to get a perfect score. Time well spent.)

You’d have to have been completely oblivious to popular culture during the last 20 years to be unaware of the Potter phenomenon and all its attendant paraphernalia. So instead of choosing just one or two items to represent Harry, I went with pretty much all of them (OK naysayers, the cake has no Marauders’ Map or Whomping Willow or dragon or hippogriff or cauldron etc. But it features the most important ones, all right?)

My dilemma is almost always one of size, particularly when items need to be made in advance. Is relative size important in this instance? If so, wouldn’t the owl take over the entire space? The scarf should clearly have been much wider, but I actually wanted it to serve dual purposes as Gryffindor house scarf and bookmark.

Dobby the house elf could really be any size, as who really knows how large a house elf typically is? Viz. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets page 14: “The little creature on the bed had large, bat-like ears and bulging green eyes the size of tennis balls.”  No height specified.

Nevertheless, I think next time I’d go with fewer, but larger, items. And since the Harry Potter craze is certain to keep its momentum for years to come, I look forward to the next challenge.