Harry's First Birthday Cake Recipe

“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 inside a 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.

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Today, on Harry’s 40th birthday, we’re celebrating the brave, resilient, and courageous Gryffindor. This heroic wizard and all his incomparably fierce and daring friends fought against seemingly insurmountable dark forces. Wand-brandishing warriors for unity, tolerance, and love, Harry and his friends ushered in a new era of peace, and along the way, won the hearts of millions of readers globally.

But first, 29 years ago, a young orphaned Harry Potter with his untidy black hair and lightning bolt-shaped scar heard four life changing words: “Yer a wizard, Harry.”

On his 11th birthday, Harry learned of a hidden magical world, one in which everyone knew his name and wizards good and evil existed side by side. He also enjoyed his very first birthday cake, one that is so delicious and easy to make that we just had to bake up one of our own! 

Today we raise our wands to the Boy Who Lived, and proudly present to you our vegan take on Harry Potter’s first birthday cake!

Ingredients 
Cake
9-inch plain chocolate cake, whatever recipe you like best (we love Beaming Baker’s!) 

Pink Buttercream Frosting 
3 ½ cups sifted powdered sugar 
2 sticks vegan butter, at room temperature 
1 and ½  teaspoons vanilla extract 
1 tablespoon pitaya/dragon fruit powder (we use TerraSoul Superfoods) 

Green Lettering 
Cake Craft’s Leaf Green Icing

Let’s Bake (and decorate!) 
The best thing about this cake is that you don’t need to have Molly Weasley’s cooking prowess. There are no fussy steps, or painstakingly complex decorations. If anything, the messier and more rustic the cake, the better! 

There is one “exotic” ingredient here: the surprisingly dragon-less pitaya, or dragon fruit, powder. This superfood has a strikingly bright pink color and packs a ton of nutrients, and in this buttercream its taste is undetectable. Pitaya powder is a vegan and allergen-free way to make the buttercream pink (no shady, insect-derived artificial colors needed). Many health food stores and websites stock pitaya powder, and it’s usually affordable too!

For this recipe, we took our inspiration from the film adaptation of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone: a simple chocolate cake frosted with thick pink buttercream and decorated by Hagrid with a “Happee Birthdae” message scrawled in messy, green icing. 

Simply bake up your favorite vegan chocolate cake, let it cool completely, and then make the frosting. 

Traditional Buttercream is one of the easiest frostings to turn vegan — simply swap dairy butter for vegan butter! 

1. In a large bowl, using a hand-held electric mixer, whip the room temperature vegan butter sticks until they’re creamy. 
   
2. Gradually pour some of the sifted powdered sugar into the creamed butter, and continue to whip until it gets thick and fluffy. Make sure to stop to scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula to make sure all of the powdered sugar gets mixed in and the sides of the bowl stay clean.
   
3. Add vanilla extract, whip, then add the remaining powdered sugar.
   
4. Add in the powdered pitaya/dragon fruit, and whip until it’s bright pink. (Feel free to add more powder depending on the intensity of the color you want.)
   
5. Once the buttercream is fluffy and uniformly pink, slather it all over the cake until it’s fully frosted. 
   
6. Using the green icing, spell out, “Happee Birthdae Harry” on top of the cake. The messier the better!
   
7. Eat. That. Cake. 
   

So what are you doing for Harry’s Birthday? Movie marathoning? Cracking open some butterbeer and cranking up your favorite wizard Rock album? Trying your hand (or wand) at some wizarding world DIY crafts? Or maybe you’ll hit the kitchen and bake up this Birthdae cake? 

​As always, if you make this recipe be sure to show us your photos and tag us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram!

Written by Victoria Tomis