A Harry Potter / Hogwarts Birthday Cake

Over the summer, we had a Harry Potter marathon.  Up to that point, we had not seen any of the movies.  I do tend to be particular about what they watch and of course, there was the whole "wizard/spells/sorcery" thing going on...and I had previous notions about that being unacceptable....  which is funny, because nobody makes such a big fuss about Lord of the Rings... but, that has sorcery, too.  So, why is that?  Is it because Harry Potter is about kids?  I don't know.  Anyway, I had decided earlier not to let them watch them.  Then I changed my mind.... I've learned that changing your mind is not always a bad thing.   Having decided we were going to throw ourselves into the whole Potter saga, I visited the local rental store, and came home with the entire collection.  They were SO good!  Not only did the kids love them, but I did, as well.  Shortly thereafter, Jacob's birthday arrived... and when I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, he replied with little hesitation, "A Hogwart's Castle"...  so, off to google I went to get as many ideas as I could before getting started.  Wow..  some of the cakes were exquisitely done with the entire Hogwarts land and buildings...  some were more simple and "generic" castle in appearance...all of them inspired me and prodded my creativity into action.  Jacob wanted the entire Hogwarts estate.. I thought that might be a tad bit far reaching, due to the fact that he also wanted to go on a camping trip for his birthday.  We would be coming home the morning of his birthday...which left me only several hours to have everything ready for his party. I finally decided to go with a castle look that I had seen online, but modified.  I had also seen some Harry Potter characters made from fondant that I was itching to try.
I get started, I stacked three loaf shaped chocolate cakes on top of one another and started shaping the cake to look like a castle....

I iced it and then mixed brown and black food coloring in fondant for the "walls".  I made shingles out of the same fondant and layered them on.  I added doors and windows and made a clock for the front. I really wanted to make more castle additions, but my time was getting short.  I did end up making one other part out of cake, that ended up looking like a cross between Hagrid's Hut and a castle addition.  I made a tower out of construction paper and an iced ice cream cone.  I really would have liked to have had the time to add more, but Jacob seemed to be pleased, so I decided to just stick with what I already had completed.  In retrospect, I think the colors would have been better if I had gone lighter....light gray, light tan... to make it look more like a castle..

The characters were a lot of fun to make.  I made Hagrid, Harry, Hermoine, and Ron and was pleased with the outcome.

While I was making cake, Sarah was handling the "Magic Wand" pretzels...and did a great job of completing them...