I have always loved Harry Potter. I even threw myself a Harry Potter birthday party when I turned 25 years old! No HP party is complete without some Harry Potter cupcakes on the dessert table. I’ve found some of the best out there, from butterbeer cupcakes to fun Harry Potter cupcake toppers.
All of the DIY recipes here are high-quality, easy, and achievable without being overly complicated. And if you’d rather buy your Harry Potter themed cupcakes or toppers instead of making them, I’ll tell you the best place to go get them. There are FREE printable Harry Potter cupcake toppers a little further down, don’t miss them!
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking one, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.
Supplies for Great Harry Potter Cupcakes
Cupcake Liners
- Brand: Eoonfirst
- 60g Paper, Non-Stick, Easy-to-Peel, Sturdy Cupcake paper – food…
- Size: gold standard foil baking cups, bottom diameter 5.0cm/1.97inch…
- Packing: PET cylindrical box for food.easy to select, easy to protect…
- Use: gold foil cupcake liners, best choice to enhance your birthday…
For Harry Potter-themed cupcakes, I’d go with gold foil liners like these – they lend themselves well to the common metals found in many Harry Potter props, like the Sword of Gryffindor!
Sprinkles
- Sprinkle Pouches in an elegant assortment of gold, silver and white…
- Includes: gold and Silver Star sprinkles; gold and Silver confetti…
- Stars and confetti sprinkles net Weight: 1. 1 oz. (30-32 g); sanding…
- Stars, confetti, sanding sugar and nonpareils made in a facility that…
- Jimmies contain soy; also made on equipment that also processes tree…
I guess you don’t have to have sprinkles on a cupcake, but… they’re just better with them. For Harry Potter cupcakes, I strongly recommend gold and silver cupcakes, because those metals are part of the Gryffindor and Slytherin house colors, as well as lots of items from the movies. This Wilton sprinkles set includes circles, stars, and sanding sugar (aka edible glitter).
Harry Potter Cupcake Toppers
If you’re really in a pinch for decorating Harry Potter birthday cupcakes, the best thing you can do is just make some normal cupcakes with frosting in whatever flavors the birthday person prefers, then stick some themed cupcake toppers in them! I’ve got several sets of Harry Potter cupcake toppers to show you… and I’m offering readers a set for FREE!
Printable Toppers
Hogwarts House Crests
These house crest cupcake toppers are my own design! They include the crests of all four houses (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff) as well as the Hogwarts school crest! There’s a PDF for easy printing and punching (you just need a 2-inch punch, like this EK Tools one). Or, if you prefer to use a machine like a Cricut Maker with the Print Then Cut feature, there are transparent PNGs of each crest included for getting perfectly shaped crests for your cake toppers.
Just make sure you have some extra-long sandwich toothpicks, too, so you have plenty of room to attach the crests and still shove them securely down in your cupcakes.
Harry Potter Characters
Another one of my designs, these character cupcake toppers include Chibi-style Funko POP! images for each character. It includes Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Luna, Sirius, Snape, Bellatrix, Hagrid, and Dobby. Just like the one above, it comes with a PDF as shown where you can easily print and punch out 2-inch toppers. Or, you can use the full-body PNG images of each character to Print Then Cut with your Cricut (up to 6 inches wide!).
Free Harry Potter Icon Toppers
I am offering the last cupcake toppers in PDF form to readers for FREE! If you’d rather have the PNG images for Print Then Cut, you can still purchase them here. This is a set of 12 iconic Harry Potter symbols, including “Happy Birthday” in a Harry Potter font, the Sorting Hat, the Deathly Hallows symbol, some potions bottles, the Elder wand, a golden snitch, a Firebolt broom, Hedwig the snowy owl, the Platform 9 3/4 sign, Harry’s signature hairline with scar and glasses, a lightning bolt, and the HP logo.
The PNG images (available only in the premium version linked above) are still the same colored circles as shown, but they are individual transparent images for use with Print Then Cut.
Have Cupcake Toppers Shipped ASAP
Carefully Crafted Icons
- MATERIAL: Our cupcake toppers are made of high quality single-sided…
- PACKAGE: Includs 24 pcs cupcake toppers,6 patterns, 4 pcs of each…
- SIZE: The size is 2.4*3.5 inch / 1.7*4.2 inch / 2*4.2 inch…
- APPLICATION:Perfect decoration for…
- TIPS:Our highest priority is your satisfaction. These cupcake toppers…
These iconic Harry Potter cupcake toppers would be quite tedious to make on your own. You’ll get 24 pre-made toppers! And these have FREE shipping with Amazon Prime, so you’ll be ready for your party on time.
Rings that Double as Favors
- DECOPAC HARRY POTTER CUPCAKE RINGS – 24 Happy Potter Hogwarts Houses…
- OFFICIALLY LICENSED – Ideal for birthdays and celebrations these…
- READY TO USE – These Harry Potter cupcake rings are sure to create a…
- FOOD SAFE – Harry Potter Rings are made of food-safe molded plastic…
- PROFESSIONAL QUALITY – Get your Cake Decorations from the same place…
If you’re throwing a Harry Potter birthday party for young children, these House ring toppers are sure to be a hit. Just frost each cupcake in a different house color and top it with its appropriate ring. The kids will love showing off their new “jewelry” while eating their desserts!
Simple, Easy Harry Potter Cupcakes
The easiest way to make Harry Potter cupcakes is to make cupcakes like you normally would, then add one of the toppers above! That way you can have any flavor you want and don’t have to stress out over the design.
You could try a special frosting flavor on the cupcakes, like this peanut butter one:
Or get some of these cute lightning bolt sprinkles from Etsy to top some vanilla buttercream frosting cupcakes!
Butterbeer Cupcakes
Wrapped in Book Pages
One of the most popular butterbeer cupcake recipes on the entire internet, these things are gorgeous AND tasty!
Special Supplies Needed: butter extract; HP book page wrappers
Flavors: toffee, butter, and butterscotch
Time to Make: 52 minutes
Skill: Beginner-Intermediate
Caramel Corn Cupcakes
Caramel corn adds a unique punch to these butter beer cupcakes!
Special Supplies Needed: butterscotch extract; caramel popcorn
Flavors: yellow cake, butter, butterscotch, caramel
Time to Make: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Skill: Beginner
Sorting Hat Cupcakes
Hershey’s Kiss Hats
Not only do those cupcakes have cute Hershey Kiss sorting hats on top, but they also all have a different color filling to let the eater know which Hogwarts House they belong to!
Special Supplies Needed: melon baller; Hershey’s kisses
Flavors: vanilla cake, chocolate and/or vanilla frosting
Time to Make: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Skill: Beginner-Intermediate
Tootsie Roll Hats
These cupcakes all have different colors of M&Ms hidden inside, so when they’re eaten the eater is “sorted!” Red M&Ms for Gryffindor, green M&Ms for Slytherin, yellow M&Ms for Hufflepuff, and blue M&Ms for Ravenclaw.
Special Supplies Needed: M&Ms; Tootsie Rolls
Flavors: chocolate, butterscotch
Time to Make: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Skill: Intermediate
Hogwarts House Cupcakes
Whether you want to incorporate all four houses or showcase your kid’s favorite Hogwarts house in your cupcake flavors and design, here are some simple ideas to make your mouth water!
House Color Swirls
These very simple Hogwarts House cupcakes just use two colors of frosting placed side-by-side in the piping bag to create a swirled look on top of each cupcake.
Gryffindor: red and gold
Slytherin: green and white
Hufflepuff: yellow and black
Ravenclaw: blue and brown (bronze)
Skill: Beginner
Red Velvet Gryffindor House Cupcakes
Red velvet lends itself well to Gryffindor’s house color of red; add some of the yellow lightning bolt sprinkles to complete the palette!
Special Supplies Needed: gold foil liners; lightning bolt sprinkles
Flavors: red velvet (chocolate), cream cheese
Time to Make: 1 hour
Skill: Beginner
Chocolate Mint Slytherin House Cupcakes
Mint chocolate was one of my favorite flavors as a kid. And what kid wouldn’t love gummy worms – aka Slytherin snakes – in their cupcake??
Special Supplies Needed: green sugar crystals; green gummy worms
Flavors: chocolate, mint
Time to Make: 1 hour
Skill: Beginner
Midnight Blue Velvet Ravenclaw House Cupcakes
These beautiful cupcakes are an adapted version of red velvet… and will most definitely make everyone’s mouths blue.
Special Supplies Needed: liquid blue food coloring
Flavors: chocolate
Time to Make: 1 hour
Skill: Beginner
Lemon Buttercream Hufflepuff House Cupcakes
Who knew lemon and chocolate would go so well together? As an adult, these are my two favorite flavors, so I’m in love. Make the cupcakes dark chocolate so they come close to matching the Hufflepuff palette of black and yellow.
Special Supplies Needed: zester
Flavors: lemon, chocolate
Time to Make: 1 hour
Skill: Beginner
Pull-Apart Cupcake Cakes
Cupcake Owl Cake
There’s no tutorial for this pull-apart owl cake , but based on this image, the main special ingredients you’ll need are vanilla wafers and yellow and brown M&Ms! It looks like they also used some edible gold sugar on Hedwig’s belly. Just use a white buttercream frosting on each cupcake with white cupcakes.
Hagrid’s Birthday Cake Made of Cupcakes
This is a quick and simple video tutorial on how to recreate Hagrid’s infamous pink birthday cake using just 7 regular cupcakes. It’s perfect for a small family birthday party!
Special Supplies Needed: tube of green frosting
Flavors: sweet cream, your choice of cake
Time to Make: 30 minutes
Skill: Beginner
Golden Snitch Cupcakes
The snitch’s wings can be drawn with vanilla almond bark on wax paper and left to dry for easy cupcake decorating!
Special Supplies Needed: white chocolate for melting; gold sanding sugar
Flavors: any cake mix you want; vanilla frosting and wings
Time to Make: 45 minutes
Skill: Beginner
Owl Cupcakes
Oreo Owls
You’ll need lots of single-sided oreos with the filling on them to achieve these owl faces. Guess you’ll just have to take one for the team and eat all of the other cookies! Their little beaks are orange M&Ms turned on their sides.
Special Supplies Needed: Oreos; M&Ms
Flavors: chocolate and/or vanilla
Time to Make: 1 hour 15 minutes
Skill: Beginner
Cinnamon Sugar Owls
These owl cupcakes use mini Oreos so there’s more room to elaborate on the owl’s body, and they come out super stinking cute.
Special Supplies Needed: Oreo Minis; black sunflower seeds
Flavors: cinnamon
Time to Make: 2 hours
Skill: Intermediate
Mandrake Cupcakes
Mochi Heads
These mandrake faces are made with mochi, but you could use pretty much any kind of modeling food (including chocolate) you like.
Special Supplies Needed: mochi or modeling chocolate; fresh herbs
Flavors: chocolate
Time to Make: 1 hour 30 minutes
Skill: Beginner
Fondant Mandrakes
These mandrakes are incredibly cute with their little hands poking over the top of the peat pots!
Special Supplies Needed: peat pots; light brown fondant
Flavors: chocolate
Time to Make: 2 hours
Skill: Intermediate
Harry Potter Sleeping Draught Cupcakes
Do you remember in Chamber of Secrets when Hermione made those cupcakes that put Crabbe and Goyle to sleep so Harry and Ron could use Polyjuice Potion to turn into them? Yeah, that’s what these are!! If you don’t have any sleeping potion handy, you can just use lavender extract. 😉
Special Supplies Needed: lavender extract
Flavors: vanilla and chocolate
Time to Make: 1 hour
Skill: Beginner
Chocolate Frog Cupcakes
The thought of eating chocolate frogs that can actually jump has always grossed me out. Fortunately, these chocolate frogs aren’t actually magical and can happily be eaten without risk of it running away.
Special Supplies Needed: frog candy mold
Flavors: chocolate, peanut butter
Time to Make: 2 hours
Skill: Beginner-Intermediate
Fondant Harry Potter Cupcakes
DIY Fondant Cupcake Toppers
This mesmerizing video shows exactly how TEN different Harry Potter cupcake toppers were made out of fondant.
Pre-Made Fondant Toppers
These pre-made Harry Potter-themed cupcake toppers might be pricey, but they’re gorgeous and will save YOU a ton of time!
Halloween Harry Potter Cupcakes
Spiders and Pull-Apart Snakes
These cupcakes made to look like the Basilisk and Aragog’s acromantula children will add a terrifically spooky vibe to the Halloween dessert table.
Special Supplies Needed: witches’ teeth candy corns; black licorice Twizzlers
Flavors: chocolate, vanilla
Time to Make: 1 hour 30 minutes
Skill: Beginner
Pumpkin and Butterbeer Cupcakes
Combine the flavor of butterbeer frosting with pumpkin cupcakes for a Halloween-friendly HP treat.
Special Supplies Needed: pumpkin sprinkles
Flavors: pumpkin spice, butterscotch
Time to Make: 1 hour
Skill: Beginner
Where to Buy Harry Potter Cupcakes
Right now, the best place to order Harry Potter cupcakes is Wal-Mart! Currently, they can make a pull-apart cupcake cake that’s covered in a large edible image of Hogwarts castle with the Hogwarts school crest in the foreground. It has a black buttercream border around the image on top of white frosted cupcakes. They also offer individual cupcakes with your choice of icing colors and sprinkles in the various house colors.
I love Harry Potter. Super cute cupcake inspo.
Hi Michelle. Your cupcakes all look so beautiful an yummy. Must save this post for my son’s next birthday, he loves Harry Potter.
such an extensive post on making Harry Potter. cakes!
surely will try one of these!
This is so cute- my kiddos would love making these with me