Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Party!

Yay Harry Potter!  My x-treme love for everyone's fave boy wizard inspired me and my very good friend Tammy to throw a fun dinner party/birthday party for one of our most favorite friends, Kiki.  The cake you see above is my 14-layer Dark Mark vanilla cake covered in yummy chocolate.  The Dark Mark was made by cutting out a stencil and then very carefully adding luster dust over the stencil.  Remove and voila!

See way too many pictures of our other Harry Potter themed goodies after the jump.

We had a smaller dinner before all the fun started, and Tammy, who is an amaaaazing cook, whipped up some amazing dishes with the help of yours truly:

Our Marauder's Map menu.  This weirdly took probably the longest of anything I did for this party, haha.  Finding the right font, figuring out how to turn the only good Marauder's Map image online into an image that would look good on brown paper...phew!  But it was well worth it.  If anyone wants the file, send me an email and I'll email it to you!  

Pumpkin Soup in hollowed out Kabocha squashes, with floral wire wrapped in floral tape for the handles.  Our intention was for them to look like little cauldrons, and I think we succeeded! 

Golden Snitch inspired Beef Wellington:  Yummy, very British Beef Wellington topped with a round of puff pastry and flanked by mashed potato wings.

Godric's Hollow Rest in Peas...buttered peas with toast gravestones.  If I was more on point I would have drawn the Deathly Hollows on one of the gravestones, missed opportunity!

And for dessert, two lovely pies.  Pumpkin had lightning scars, Apple had the Dark Mark.

After dinner, all our other buds came over for boozie Butterbeer, treats and hang out time!

Handmade chocolate coins dusted with luster dust for Gringott's Bank.

Handmade cranberry-apple jewels for Ravenclaw's Jewel Vault.

Butterbeer!  Looking around online, we weren't so into the recipes we found so we decided to wing it.  We combined apple cider, apple brandy (such as Apple Jack) and butter extract flavoring.  Topped off with brandy flavored whipped cream, the result was an seasonal, delicious drink that had the slight smell of butter but not much of the flavor.  It was great!

Tammy's bread Sorting Hat.  We love him.

Dark Mark Hummus!

Wand shaped cheese straws.  Cheese straws must seems awfully old school and sort of out of date, but believe me, if you use Smitten Kitchen's recipe for your next get together, you will NOT be disappointed.  They are SO GOOD.

Last but not least, we hung up an empty gold frame for everyone to take pictures in.  We even took video, to replicate the moving portraits in Harry Potter.  Dorky?  Yes.  Fun?  Yes yes yes.  Both Tammy and I are in the photo above, it was so much fun hosting this party with her, I can't wait for our next project together!  

ETA: The font used for the Marauder's Map menu is Aquiline, which you can get for free from dafont.com.