Harry’s Feast

Zoe wanted to finish Harry Potter Month with a feast on Harry’s actual birthday, July 31^st. That meant not only a lot of cooking, but cooking recipes that I had never tried before. Luckily, a friend of mine sent Zoe two Harry Potter cookbooks. I told Zoe to choose her five favorites and we could narrow it down to three…well, that didn’t exactly go as planned.

The first book had two sections: succulent and sweet. In all of the “succulent” recipes, only one of them contained protein; the rest of the book was breads and desserts…not that that is a bad thing, it’s just worrisome for someone who wants to fit into her jeans afterward. So, I told Zoe we would need to cut the dessert recipes in half. Then, so I wouldn’t have to make all the recipes in one day, we spread the baking out over three afternoons.

Recipe #1: Yorkshire Delights

We selected the single entree recipe from the first book, which was Yorkshire Delights. Essentially, they are tiny meatballs baked in a muffin tin with a pancake-like batter poured on top of them so that they come out looking like little clams. The recipe called for half a pound of meat, but being in a family of big meat-eaters, I used two pounds of meat and just made extra meatballs…which, incidentally, came out a bit overcooked. However, both Nik and Zoe loved the Yorkshire Delights with the meat surrounded by the breading, so we can call that one a “win.”

Recipe #2: Petunia’s Pudding

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry’s Aunt Petunia makes a “pudding” (or an English Trifle…or, as we Americans say, a cake). This recipe came from the second book, but Zoe chose to omit the jam. So first we made the yellow loaf cake…and put the batter into two 5” round pans and one 9” pan. The tricky part of cutting the dessert recipes in half was not knowing exactly how long to cook them. We must have guesstimated correctly because but we ended up with cooked and not burnt cakes. While the cakes were cooling, Zoe and I made the custard, which was a first for me. I skipped the part about straining the custard through a sieve because…well, I didn’t really care if my custard had lumps…plus I don’t know what a sieve is and I’m pretty sure I don’t have one…okay, I just googled what the heck a “sieve” is and I do have one, but I don’t care about lumps enough to have to wash it later. The cake in the movie is covered with cherries, but Zoe made the executive decision to go with strawberries instead.

Recipe #3: Hagrid’s Cake

It wouldn’t be a birthday without a birthday cake, so Zoe decided to recreate Hagrid’s “HAPPEE BIRTHDAE HARRY” cake. We already had most of the ingredients for the cake. For the icing, the recipe called for beets and creamed coconut; however, since that didn’t sound appetizing to my little chef, she decided to get vanilla icing instead; as we were already making several recipes from scratch, I welcomed the shortcut. Zoe was in charge of measuring the ingredients. Of course, she decided to taste the cocoa powder and was very unpleasantly surprised to find out it contained no sugar. The recipe didn’t tell us how thick and dense the batter got, so I helped mix when her arms got tired. It was also quite difficult to spread in the two miniature pans I got, so when they came out, they definitely looked a little misshapen…it’s a good thing the cake was supposed to look like Hagrid had sat on it, because we were going for authentic.

Recipe #4: Hogwarts Treacle Tart

I was relieved to learn that I had all the ingredients for the Treacle Tart on hand…including lemons, which is a favorite for me and Zoe…not so much Nik since he doesn’t do “sour” at all. I washed my trusty five-inch pie pans yet again while Zoe rolled the crust batter. We even had enough crust for two tarts (although one was a bit smaller than the other), despite cutting the recipe in half. Then we had to make the filling. The ingredients say to heat water, add sugar until it dissolves, and then let the syrup bubble for 10 minutes until it turns amber. I have never caramelized sugar before, so it was kind of neat for me and Zoe to see the white sugar turn to a caramelly-molasses. Then we added the rest of the ingredients and filled our two mini cake tins. Again, we had to guess how long to leave them in the oven because it said “until the filling is lightly set” but it kept looking jiggly to me…in hind-sight, since we put it in two tins instead of just one, that could be why I thought I might have overcooked it a bit. Anyway, I was excited to taste this one because it called for the juice of a couple of lemons.

Recipe #5: Butterbeer

Butterbeer is mentioned repeatedly in the series, so we couldn’t have a wizarding birthday without butterbeer and there are literally hundreds of butterbeer recipes. Of course, Zoe found the one she wanted to try from YouTube and, of course, it called for “butterscotch sauce” which we could not find at the store. Fortunately (???) I found a recipe for homemade butterscotch sauce made from items we already had (unsalted butter, brown sugar, heavy cream, salt, and vanilla extract). So, once we made our own butterscotch sauce (which was delicious, by the way), we used that to make our butterbeer (the only other ingredient was cream soda), and then topped it off with home-made whipped cream. Unfortunately, my whisk attachment to my hand-mixer was in my dishwasher at the time, so after five minutes of hand-whisking, we decided that was fruitless and used my bread mixer attachment instead…good enough for government work.

At last, Saturday evening, all recipes made and the table set in the fashion of the Great Hall, the three of us sat down to our meal of one entrée, three desserts, and butterbeer, but only after we were sorted into our houses. Zoe’s favorite dessert was Hagrid’s Happee Birthdae Harry Cake, my favorite was Aunt Petunia’s Pudding, and – to my utter shock – Nik’s favorite was the Treacle Tart made with lemon. The butterbeer turned out to be too rich for all of us, but Zoe liked the home-made whipped cream the best. I am eternally indebted to my nephew who came over the following day and had no choice but to leave with half of the desserts so I wouldn’t eat them all and end up in a diabetic coma.

Note to self, next time I let my 10-year-old choose recipes for a feast, I need to lay down some ground rules…like maybe a vegetable dish or two would be good. While it was fun, I have to say I was very glad to FINALLY get my kitchen island clean and all of our measuring cups rewashed for the last time…at least until our next baking episode.

If you want to try any of the recipes we made, the book we used were “The Official Harry Potter Baking Book” by Joanna Farrow, published by Scholastic Inc. and “The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook” by Dinah Bucholz, published by Adams Media.