Making Magic

The Harry Potter phenomenon shows no signs of slackening. Muggles everywhere are still reading and rereading the seven-book series, plumbing the pages for previously overlooked minutiae and foreshadowing. Even without a class in Divination, I can foresee many Potter-themed cakes in my future. But that’s just fine, because there are so many characters, so many details and Potter-specific elements, that there’s really no end to the kinds of cakes one can create.

This time, the request was for Hogwarts castle – Harry’s school. The Hogwarts that appears in the films is a sprawling ungainly structure. Sure, I could have recreated that, on a ten-foot-wide platform, complete with outbuildings, a lake and an adjacent forest. But that seemed a little showoff-y and impractical, considering our somewhat modest budget for this project. More importantly, I still haven’t taken the plunge and bought even a wheeled cart, let alone a delivery truck. So I, and some unlucky saps would have had to walk the cake the 21.3 kilometres to its Gush Etzion destination. No, the forest and lake were out.

“How about a dungeon with a basilisk (a serpent that kills with one look)?” the customer requested. Now that gave me pause. How do you excavate into and below a cake without it completely collapsing? And how would you even be able to see into the dungeon if the rest of the castle was erected above it? I’m sure there’s an engineer somewhere out there with a solution to this problem, but none stepped forward. The dungeon was out.

Happily, there were many other Potter features that were in. My favourite among them was Fluffy, the three-headed dog. Mine turned out a lot friendlier looking than the one described in the book. Somehow all of his faces refused to snarl.

The dragon too didn’t look all that fierce, but I was just happy he agreed to stay wrapped around a turret and didn’t plummet down onto the surface of the cake.

I spent a lot of time, as I often do, on details that probably nobody else picked up on. Did you notice that the turrets all have some lit windows in them? Did you see the gargoyles, or the broomsticks leaning against the side wall?

You frequently hear how costume designers dress stage actors in authentic period garb, including trims and lace and petticoats that no one will ever see. Somehow, subliminally, all these details add to the overall impression. I like to think about my little extras in exactly the same way.