Happy Birthday to my son! He wanted a Harry Potter party so here is the cake idea we came up with together after looking at many ideas on cakecentral.com. The bottom cake is an 18x24 chocolate cake, the book is a white vanilla cake, the (mini) Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is butter yellow cake. All of the cakes were covered in butter/vanilla butter cream icing. The bottom cake is wrapped in chocolate fondant with a wood grain pattern in it. The castle is also covered in chocolate fondant and a brick pattern. The edges of the books pages were hand painted with food coloring watered down with corn syrup and water so I could paint with it. the font was dont with a etbile printer and cut out with a razor and placed on the book page. The wand, the book mark and glasses are also fondant. The doors are painted with gold luster dust. The scarf with fringe tassels is fondant as well pressed with something like fish scales inverted pattern press sheet. The grass is butter cream. The stars and moon are fondant painted with gold and pearl luster dust on floral wire. The Hogwarts crest in the lower right corner is an edible image. I was going to put in the center of the wood grain base but I didnt look just right. The snitch sits upon a pedestal of cereal treats with a stars and moon pattern on the fondant. The snitches wings are glued to the ball with melted butterscotch chips. The castles turrets are ice cream cones covered in black fondant with a ?scales? pattern. They are glued down with melted Ghirardelli dark chocolates. Whats a Magical birthday cake without some sparkler and fire candles! (photos not shown due to people in them). This cake has 26 cups of batter and I think 4-5 batches of butter cream. It was super heavy I didnt weight the cake. My photos are not so good, I think the cake came out really well. more photos and information at http://patticakespatticakes.blogspot.com/. feel free to ask any questions...i am always happy to help as i am happy to get my questions awnsered by fellow amature cake decorators.