For my New activity of the week Kellie joined me to make up some recipes from "The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook" by Dinah Bucholz.
There is some seriously strange stuff in there, and some stuff we can't legally make in America (Blood pudding anyone?!) but we found 3 recipes to try and share...
1. Meat and Potatoes Pies
(I altered this recipe so it was faster...the original took a total of 3 hours not including the 2 hours for the pie dough to chill)...
6 oz chuck steak, diced into small pieces (I used stew meat and cut each piece with scissors into 3 or 4 smaller pieces).
1 small onion, finely diced
Tbsp minced garlic (this is something I added)
1 red potato, peeled and diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 tsp sage
1 1/2 cup chicken broth
2 Tbsp veg. oil
2 Tbsp flour
pie crust (The book has a nice recipe for pie crust in it, but needing to be quick I buy premade crusts
1 egg
Heat oil in a skillet and brown meat chunks. I browned on both sides until meat was nearly cooked through for about 10 minutes. Remove meat into a bowl to rest and add onions and garlic to skillet to sautee until brown. Re-add meat and sprinkle with flour. Pour over chicken broth and mix together. Bring to a simmer and cover, stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes. Add carrots and potatoes, and sage and mix together. Continue to simmer for about 15-25 minutes or until potatoes and carrots become softer and mixture is thickened. Stir every couple of minutes so gravy doesn't burn to bottom.
While simmering cut pie dough into nine 6 inch circles. Grease a muffin tin and fill each cup with round of dough. Fill generously with meat and potato filling when done. Cut nine 4 inch circles with slits in top to create top crust. Brush top crust with a mixture of 1 egg beaten with 1 Tbsp water. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
2. Glazed Carrots
This recipe was not my favorite, I think it needed brown sugar or something added, but then again, I was never much a fan of cooked carrots.
3. Canary Custard Cremes
Cookie:
2 1/4 cup flour
1 small package cook and serve vanilla pudding
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick butter at room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, pudding mix, baking powder, and salt. In a seperate bowl mix together butter and powdered sugar until fluffy. This takes about 5 minutes and frequent scraping of the bowl. Add egg and vanilla to butter mixture and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix until crumbly. Add milk and form into a dough. Roll dough into one inch balls and space about 1 1/2 inches apart. Press flat and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 8 minutes on bottom rack and then 8 minutes on middle rack in oven. Cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then remove to cooling rack.
There is a filling recipe in the book for a basic vanilla frosting. I had a canned buttermilk frosting on hand and used those instead as the filling between two sandwiched cookies.
