Harry Potter

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Tomorrow night Hans and I are going to see Harry Potter. The tickets were purchased last night, and I am ready to see it! I'm a bit sad that this is it. No more movies to film or books to write. I was sad when the 7th book was released, but with the release of the final movie, it really feels like it's the end.

Yes, I know, I'm a total Harry Potter geek!

Anyway, I've seen some ideas and recipes around the blogoshpere recently, and thought I would try my hand at some. I figured Hans and I needed to imbibe in some Cauldron Cakes and Butterbeer before the movie.

I saw a plethora of recipes for cauldron cakes, pretty much all of them called for devil's food cake mix. Well, I have my own recipe for chocolate cupcakes. 

Cauldron Cakes

1 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of sugar or substitute (xylitol or stevia)

1/4 cup of oil (I normally use olive or canola)

1/2 cup of cocoa powder

1 cup of water

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon of vinegar

Mix everything in 1 bowl and pour into muffin tin/silicone cupcake forms and bake in a preheated 350F/176C oven for about 20 minutes. Remove and let cool. Makes about 18 small-medium cupcakes.

Once cooled begin decorating. 

My first few cupcakes I attempted to make cauldron handles out of chocolate. The handles took what seemed like forever to cool, granted I wasn't able to pop them in the fridge (or freezer) to cool. Once they were cooled they worked, but looked terrible on my cauldrons.

I decided to go with other suggestions and use licorice strings. These turned out much better! I removed some the the center of my cauldron with a knife to fill with dragons blood (black currant jelly) and added the licorice string handles. I wanted to add chocolate chip 'feet' to the base of the cauldron, but we didn't have any. So, I left well enough alone.

Next came the Butterbeer.

This was a difficult one, and some of the experimenting was unpleasant. All of the recipes I found called for butterscotch schnapps or butterscotch chips or extract. Well, I don't have any of those! So, I decided to make my own version of butter beer, using a recipe I found  for butterscotch sauce.

Butterbeer (1 glass)

1 tablespoon of butterscotch sauce (recipe found here)

1/2 - 1 teaspoon of butter

beer to fill

This is best served warm. It would make a pretty tasty winter party drink. 

Heat butterscotch sauce with butter in the microwave (will only take 30 seconds or less) stir to mix. Add a small bit of warm beer to mix, then top with the rest. It will be very foamy, be careful not to overfill.

If serving cold, chill the beer first, mix together room temperature butterscotch sauce and butter. Add a small amount of beer to mix, then top it off.

Adjust ingredients to taste. The first time I made this it was WAY too sweet for me. 

Are you going to see the final Harry Potter movie?

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