On Harry’s 11th birthday, Hagrid gives him a birthday cake and his Hogwarts letter. Recreate the moment with homemade cake for Harry’s birthday.
Jump to RecipeOn July 31, 1991, Hagrid showed up to the hut that Uncle Vernon was trying to hide from the wizarding world in. Harry Potter found out that he was a wizard and would be going to Hogwarts. Harry received a birthday cake from Hagrid. The cake was the first he’d been given since he was a year old.
“Anyway – Harry,” said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, “a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here – I mighta sat on it at some point, but it’ll taste all right.”
From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

This cake was one of the first recipes that I made for our Harry Potter Club. I’ve had a recipe for a chocolate cake for a long time. I used that as my base for the cake. Then I made my favorite cream cheese icing and tinted it pink. The book doesn’t describe the color of the icing on the cake, just the letters. So, I went with the movie version of this cake for design but book for the words.
In the movie, Hagrid spells the words wrong, but not in the book. Luckily, I had some green icing meant for writing on cakes leftover from one of the boys birthday parties. It worked much better than trying to pipe it myself as I did on Nick’s Deathday Cake.
For Harry’s Birthday Cake, I decided to make it a double-layered cake with a bit of frosting in the middle. I posted my chocolate cake recipe a long time ago (you can find it here), but I’ll quickly go over the steps again. You don’t have to make a cake from scratch for this, but since I love to bake, I did. A box chocolate cake would work just as well.

Harry Potter’s Birthday Cake Step by Step
Ingredients
Chocolate Cake
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 2 oz semisweet chocolate bars (melted)
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 4 oz butter (softened)
- 4 oz cream cheese (softened)
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 drops red food coloring
- green writing gel
Preparation
Cake
Preheat the oven to 350F then grease and flour two 8- or 9-inch round cake pans.

Combine 2 cups of flour, 1 1/3 cups of sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp of salt in a large mixing bowl.

Add 1/2 cup of butter, 1 cup of milk, and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Mix this with an electric mixer for about one minute.

Then add 2 eggs and 2 oz of melted semisweet chocolate. Mix this on high speed for a minute or two, until it forms a batter.

Divide the batter into the two prepared cake pans. Bake for about 30-45 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Frosting
While the cake cools, make your frosting. Combine 4 oz of softened butter with 4 oz of softened cream cheese until they are well mixed. Then add 2 cups of powdered sugar, a little at a time, until the frosting is creamy and smooth.

Stir in 1 tsp of vanilla extract, then a drop or two of red food coloring to make it pink.

Wait until the cakes have completely cooled. Put a small amount of frosting on top of one cake. If the cake isn’t flat on top, it helps to use a bread knife to cut the top off.

Then stack the other cake on top of the frosting to hold them together and form a line of frosting in the middle.

Add the rest of the pink frosting to the cake, spreading it out to cover the entire top and sides of the cake. I find having an angled icing spatula works wonders for frosting a cake. Angled spatulas are flat enough to smooth out the frosting.

Once you have your cake covered with the pink frosting, you may want to give it a few minutes to set. Then use green writing gel to put the words on the cake. You can go book-style and write “Happy Birthday Harry” or movie-style and spell it “Happee Birthdae Harry.”
And the wonderful thing about making this cake from Hagrid is that he is not well-known for his cooking and baking skills. So if the words don’t line up well or get larger and smaller, then you can claim it’s just Hagrid’s attempt at baking!


Recipe
Originally Published On: July 31, 2018
Last Updated On: July 1, 2023

Harry Potter’s Birthday Cake
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 2 oz semisweet chocolate bars (melted)
- 4 oz butter (softened)
- 4 oz cream cheese (softened)
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 drops red food coloring
- green writing gel
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Grease and flour two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans
- Combine dry ingredients in mixer bowl
- Add butter, milk, and vanilla
- Attach flat beater and set speed to 2 for about 1 minute
- Add eggs and chocolate and continue on speed 2 for 30 seconds
- Increase speed to 6 for another minute
- Pour batter into pans and bake for 30-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean
- Cool 10 minutes in pan, then transfer to cooling rack
- Add butter and cream cheese to mixing bowl
- Attach paddle attachment and mix on 4 until mixed well
- Turn to stir and add half of the powdered sugar and mix until creamy and smooth
- Add the other half of the powdered sugar until creamy and smooth
- Beat in vanilla extract
- Add a tiny amount of red food coloring to make the frosting pink
- Once the cake has cooled, add a small amount of pink frosting between the layers of cake and stack them
- Cover the top and sides of the cake with the pink frosting
- Use the green writing gel to write “Happy Birthday Harry” on the cake (or “Happee Birthdae Harry” as in the movie)
All nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutrition content will vary based on brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes, and more.
More Harry Potter-Inspired Recipes to try
- Butterbeer: A Harry Potter Party Essential
- Harry Potter’s Birthday Cake
- Crystallized Pineapple: A Sweet Treat with Only 3 Ingredients
- Harry Potter’s Treacle Tarts Recipe: Sweet and Vegan
- Canary Creams from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes
- Sorting Hat Cupcakes
- Sweet and Creamy Butterbeer Ice Cream
- Soft and Sweet Treacle Fudge
- Rock Cakes that Won’t Break your Teeth
- Paczki: Polish Doughnuts
- Pumpkin Juice
- The Welcoming Feast Roast Beef
- One-Pot Goulash
- Kreacher’s French Onion Soup
- Nearly-Headless Nick’s Deathday Cake
- Chocolate and Caramel Cockroach Clusters
- Dumbledore’s Apple and Sage Pork Chops
- Pumpkin Pasties from the Hogwarts Express
Recipes Using Frosting
- How to Make Perfect Cream Cheese Frosting
- Elegant and Creamy Banana Cake
- Chocolate Cake
- No Yeast Jumbo Cinnamon Rolls in Less than One Hour
- Banana Bread Bars
- Carrot Cake with Pineapple Filling
- Key Lime Frosted Cookies
- Nearly-Headless Nick’s Deathday Cake
- Harry Potter’s Birthday Cake
- How to Make the Best Quick Buttercream Frosting
More Cake Recipes
- Easy Pull-Apart Caramel Coffee Cake Recipe
- Ice Cream Sandwich Cake Recipe: Perfect Summer Dessert
- Dutch Oven Apple Cobbler Dump Cake Recipe for Camping
- Chocolate Strawberry Cake
- Cobweb Cake
- Strawberry Shortcake
- Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
- King Cake with Cream Cheese and Pecan Filling
- Elegant and Creamy Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
- Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
- Nearly-Headless Nick’s Deathday Cake
- Better-Than-Sex Cake or Chocolate Caramel Poke Cake
- Harry Potter’s Birthday Cake
- Peach and Blueberry Cake
- Carrot Cake with Pineapple Filling
- Banana Cake with Glaze
- Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
- Perfect Fall Pumpkin Roll
- How to Make the Best Quick Buttercream Frosting
I love anything Harry Potter themed and this cake is brilliant… it looks just like the one in the film! Looks absolutely delicious too!
Thanks! I’ve done the cake both ways, following the movie and book and it’s so fun to recreate something we love.
Nice recipe and idea. As a Harry Portter fan, this cakes is really awesome!
I’m glad you like it! We are big fans here, too.
YUM! I need to make a cake for my son’s 5th birthday–maybe I’ll use this recipe. Looks delicious!!
It’s a perfect birthday cake for a Harry Potter fan.
This is amazing! I love that you spelled it that way. Such a fun way to make the Harry Potter books and movies come alive!
As a book lover, I had to go with the book spelling. People have seen the movie spelling more, but I like the books better 🙂
What a fun July you’re having! All these yummy HP goodies. I’d love to re-create Harry’s birthday cake. This looks awesome.
It was so fun to make all of the Harry Potter recipes. We had a blast finding all the food references in the books.
Harry Potter Club? Interesting! I watched all 8 Harry Potter movies in one sitting.
Your recipe and idea are really nice.
You did a good job creating this cake! I bet everyone enjoyed this.
Thanks! We all have a sweet tooth here, so the cake didn’t last long.
I live everything cake, but this one is so special. And it looks delicious!
I agree, it’s such a special cake, especially if you’re an HP fan like we are.
This is too awesome & the recipe sounds great! My oldest loves HP, I could totally attempt this one for her birthday this year!
It would be the perfect birthday cake for any Harry Potter fan, for sure!
I should have come to enjoy a slice of that delicious chocolate cake. Once I settle into my new house, I have to get some mixing bowls.
The cake is so yummy. I’ve used this recipe for many cakes before making the Harry Potter one.
I love cream cheese icing it’s my favorite! I am glad you went with the book spelling. It seems right
It’s my favorite, too. And I’ll always go with books over a movie any day.
Beautiful! I use to love cream cheese icing until I went Vegan haha 🙂
Oh man, I would have to find some kind of substitute. Cream cheese icing is my favorite!
We are huge Harry Potter fans, so this is so much fun! My kids would love to make something like this.
My boys enjoyed it, and that was before they really knew much about Harry Potter. We have since started reading the illustrated versions with my older son so now he’s asking me to make all of these again!
My son will love the idea of celebrating Harry Potter’s birthday! Great cake!!
We celebrated and called out Happy Birthday to Harry Potter together 🙂 The boys thought it was so fun.
what a fun creative idea for a cake! I’ll have to give this a try for my kiddos, I know they’d love it! thanks!
Any Harry Potter fan would be sure to enjoy this cake. It’s so fun to imagine you’re there with all the magic and adventure.
Who could ever forget that scene of the cake Harry gets in the movie! Love that you have recreated this as it is sure to be a hit for children everywhere. Your recipe is set out in such an easy to follow way, that I am looking forward to giving this a go.
It’s such a pivotal moment for so many reasons, so it was great to be able to reenact in a small way with the cake.
You are so creative! Love the way you made Harry Potter’s cake. Looks delicious. I’m a Harry Potter big fan, I’ll make this recipe for my birthday
It’s such a yummy cake recipe. And of course, it’s always better if it’s Harry Potter themed!
What a fun idea! I can’t wait until my youngest is old enough for Harry Potter so I can experience it all over again!
We recently started reading the illustrated versions of the book with my oldest son. He was 5 when we started but he’s 6 now and we are about 1/3 of the way through Chamber of Secrets. My youngest can’t wait until he is 5 so we can start reading the books to him, too. My husband had also never read the books (only watched the movies) so it’s new for both of them which is so fun.
Love this idea of a cake. My cousin is Harry Potter fan. I am sure she would love a cake like this. I will try out your recipe and surprise her with a cake.
That sounds like the perfect surprise for any Harry Potter fan!
That was an amazing idea. We love Harry Potter! As for the recipe, I’m really not that much of a baker but this looks simple enough. And yummy, too
It’s a pretty easy cake to make. Of course, you could do a boxed cake and decorate it the same, but we like to cook from scratch most of the time.
The idea is great! Love it!!! And most importantly, the recipe is very straightforward, it is not that difficult to make. Thanks a lot.
It’s a delicious cake recipe and one we’ve made for many occasions.
My kids grew up with the Harry Potter series and read all the books and saw all the films. It was an exhilarating time with that cake scene being one of the memories they hold dear. Kudos on your creative approach
I can’t even tell you how many time’s I’ve read the entire series and watched the movies. We also listen to the soundtracks a lot. My boys are just starting to read the books with us and it’s so fun to go through that first experience with them.
My son is a huge Harry Potter fan! He has a wand from that very same place, such a special experience! Love this cake too, sounds delicious and I can’t wait to make one!!
We have a few wands, my youngest son’s room is the Gryffindor Common Room so they are all hanging in there. I bet your son would love to make this cake with you!
This Harry Potter Birthday cake looks delicious. My daughter is a big fan and we will try the recipe soon.
It’s such a fun recipe to make for any Harry Potter fan. The cake is the perfect balance of sweet but not too sweet, so even a non-HP fan would still enjoy it!
It’s a really interesting way to prepare a birthday cake. Hope, it will help me in the future. By the way, thanks for writing such an informative post.
It’s fun to recreate things from our favorite books/movies. A perfect birthday cake for any Harry Potter fans you know.