Pumpkin Juice

When I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios Hollywood last month, one of my favorite finds was the Pumpkin Juice and Pumpkin Fizz (a carbonated version of the juice).  It is apple juice  based but has the perfect blend of pumpkin spices to give it a nice pumpkin flavor without a weird texture.

There are several copy-cat recipes online.  I combined 2 to get the look and flavor I was going for: Food In Literature (a super great website btw) and Favorite Family Recipes.

I needed to fill a large drink dispenser so it was a go big or go home situation.

15 oz pumpkin puree
4 cups water
4 cups apple juice
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice (can add more, to taste)
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tsp vanilla
Additional gallons of apple juice (as much as you need)


To make the "Pumpkin Juice" that mixes with the additional apple juice:

1. In a sauce pan mix pumpkin puree, sugar, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla.
2.  Add 2 cups of water and 2 cups of apple juice.
3.  Simmer for at least 30 minutes to infuse liquids with pumpkin flavor.
4.  Strain through metal mesh sieve.
5.  Return pumpkin to pan and add remaining juice/water.
6. Simmer for at least 30 minutes to infuse liquids with pumpkin flavor.
7.  Strain through metal mesh sieve.
8.  Allow pumpkin juice to cool completely, discard rest of pumpkin mush.

Mix pumpkin juice with additional apple juice and ice.  Stir occasionally.

Notes:  Since I was experimenting with this recipe, I simmered only a couple cups of liquid at a time because I wasn't sure how much "pumpkin Juice" I would want.  I also originally added 2-3 tsp of pumpkin pie spice, but ended up adding more in between each simmering time (I simmered 4 different times about 2 cups of liquid each).  I would imagine if you wanted to make Pumpkin Fizz you could just add club soda to the apple juice and pumpkin juice.

Happy Birthday Harry, Recipies

Yorkshire Pudding

(adapted from simplebites.net)

1 3/4 cup flour

1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 cup water
4 eggs (at room temperature)
1 stick butter at room temperature

Sift together flour and salt.  Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in milk and water.  Whisk until well incorporated.  In a small separate bowl beat eggs until frothy.  Beat into other ingredients.  Refrigerate mixture for at least an hour.  Generously grease two 12-cup muffin tins with softened butter.  Place in oven and preheat to 400 degrees.  While oven is preheating remove mixture from refrigerator and whisk until small bubbles appear on surface.  Remove tins from oven when butter is browning and smoking slightly.  Immediately and quickly fill each tin with approximately 1/4-1/3 cup of batter, fill all cups evenly and not too full as it will puff up while cooking.  Place back in oven as soon as filled and bake for 20 minutes, until puffed and edges are lightly browned.  Serve immediately with roast beef and gravy.

Cauldron Cakes

There are so many amazing versions of cauldron cakes that have been created.  Some are spicy, some chocolate, some have cauldron handles and some have potions spilling forth.  For this party I didn't have a lot of time so I kept it simple.

1 brownie mix

1 vanilla buttercream frosting (recipe below)

Raspberries

Gold Flake sprinkles

Mix and bake brownies according to packaging, except bake them in a well greased mini muffin pan.

Mix up vanilla buttercream as brownies cool completely. 

Vanilla Buttercream:

1/3 stick butter, softened

3 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 Tbsp milk

Mix butter and powdered sugar together until crumbly.  Stir in vanilla and milk and blend until creamy.  Add more powdered sugar or milk to achieve desired consistency. 

Frost brownies, sprinkle with gold flake sprinkles and place a washed raspberry in the center.

Acid Pops:  I made these as directed on The Pastry Affair.  The only change I would make would be to use Karo (corn) syrup rather than honey because I don't like the flavor of honey and thought it was too overwhelming.





Buttermilk Recipes

I have rediscovered my love for using buttermilk in recipes.  Here are some good things I have made the past 2 weeks.

Buttermilk Syrup (Butterbeer Syrup for HP fans)

(Adapted from Allrecipes)

1 1/2 cups white sugar

3/4 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup butter

2 tablespoons corn syrup

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a saucepan, stir together the sugar, buttermilk, butter, corn syrup, and baking soda. Stir until sugar melts and then bring to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, and stir in the vanilla.               

Truck Stop Buttermilk Pancakes

(Recipe adapted from Allrecipes)

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

1 tablespoon butter, melted

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 teaspoons sugar

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, butter and buttermilk. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar; stir into the wet ingredients just until blended.  Heat a large skillet over medium heat, and coat with cooking spray. Pour 1/4 cupfuls of batter onto the skillet, and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip with a spatula, and cook until browned on the other side. Continue with remaining batter.               

Strawberry Soup

(adapted from Allrecipes)

3 cups strawberries

2 1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup sugar

Puree all ingredients together in a blender.  Serve cold.  Strawberry soup is a great and different appetizer. My family first tried it on a Carribbean Cruise.  This serves 10.

Buttermilk Banana Bread

(adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (I use about 3 average sized bananas)
4 tablespoons buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Grease and flour 1 large loaf pan (9 1/4 X 5 1/4-inch). In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, bananas, buttermilk and vanilla until the batter is well mixed. Add in the flour, baking powder, salt and soda. Mix until well combined. Pour batter into greased bread pan and bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Buttermilk Cream Cheese Frosting

(adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe)

3 cups powdered sugar
4 oz cream cheese, softened
6 tablespoons buttermilk or milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix the softened cream cheese and buttermilk together until smooth. Add the vanilla and mix. Whisk in the confectioner’s sugar.

Harry Potter and the Horcrux Hunt

For the Harry Potter 7.2 premier this past weekend I decided to to an all out final fling.  At my party in November for part 1 I focused on the Hallows, so this time it was all about destroying Horcruxes.

There were six different challenges you had to complete, one for each horcrux.  Everyone had a lanyard representing their house and when eat challenge was complete you could check it off by covering the number with that horcrux's sticker.  There was also a prize at each horcrux for people to take home.  By completing the challenges you were entered into a raffle.

Diary Challenge: Hermione has been petrified by the monster in the chamber of secrets. The only way to reverse the petrification is to grow Mandrakes. In Herbology we are re-potting the mandrakes today. In 1 minute try to dig up and repot all of the mandrakes (24) to help Hermione while Ron and Harry try to save Ginny from the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets and destroy Tom Riddle’s Diary. When the challenge is complete make sure to collect your own quill and diary.

I got the pot signs from here and the babies from here.  I wish I had earmuffs but didn't have time to find any (plus it's July!!)...  this was a pretty funny challenge.  The favors were little covered notebooks and a small quill tied together with a leather string.

 Ring Challenge: Throw on a witch hat and the object of the game is to toss a ring on your opponents hat. Dumbledore has destroyed the ring but make sure to gather a resurrection stone magnet or hair clip before moving on to the next challenge.

I saw a game like this in college and you can actually buy an official one online, but I just made my own using black posterboard for the hats, and glowstick bracelets for the rings.  It was hilarious!!  I made the resurrection stone magnets by glueing the symbol onto flattened dark green marbles and then glueing those onto magnets using regular tacky craft glue.  They turned out awesome.  The hair clips were the same but small and clear, glued onto bobby pins from oriental trading company.

Locket Challenge: The Locket is at the bottom of the bowl and to collect it you need to drop marbles at nose level into the bowl. Take turns  with your partner and the person with the most marbles in the cup with the locket wins! Make sure to pick up one Harry Potter flair when you complete the challenge.

This was inspired by a minute to win it game called, "Drop, Sink, Clink"...  I picked up the locket on clearance from Hot Topic and used 3 candle votives in the bottom of a plastic bucket.  Instead of quarters we dropped flattened marbles.  I got the Harry Potter flair buttons from Mud in My Blood on etsy.  She has amazing selections of Harry Potter stuff, check her out, and "like" her on facebook for discount coupons codes.

Diadem Challenge: The Ravenclaws are wise and clever. Complete the word search and “Who Said” quiz to complete the challenge. Make sure to grab a book mark since those Ravenclaws love to read!

I found all of the quotes for "Who said" by searching favorite character's quotes online and from here.  The word search is one that Kellie and I worked on months ago by altering one we had found online.  My sister weaved the bookmarks.

Hufflepuff Cup Challenge: When Harry, Ron, and Hermione searched the LeStrange’s vault at Gringotts for the Hufflepuff cup everything they touched multiplied. Split into 2 teams and play the memory game. At the end of the game enjoy a butterbeer or Dark Mark cupcake! Hufflepuff’s apparently love cupcakes.


How shall I prepare thee on this summer day?
Unfrosted, thou art sweet;
Frosted, thou art divine.
Food of the gods,
Like ambrosia to me.
Each bite:
Perfection!
Unusual though it may be,
Forever shall I sing thy praises.
Fantastic; most splendid! My cupcake are thee!

I can't remember where I got this poem SORRY if it was from you!  To make the memory game I found all of the pictures at the Leaky Cauldron and picked out the ones that related to horcruxes.  For the Dark Mark cupcakes I made picks with a dark mark I found on google and the cupcakes were just triple chocolate with buttercream frosting and black sprinkles.  The butterbeer cupcakes were catered by my friend Thu and were absolutely incredible.  She picked up her recipe here. 

Nagini Challenge: When most people have completed the challenges we will re-enact the slaying of Nagini by Neville. Grab the sorting hat and the sword of Gryffindor and give it a try!

For this challenge I picked up a sword from oriental trading company, grabbed my sorting hat, and altered a Dragon pinata to be a snake by cutting off its legs and covering it with dark green crepe paper. 

New 52: New wizarding recipes

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.

Harry Potter Party Food 2010-Sweet dishes

So many sweet dishes to be had. 

1.  Snitch Cake--  For Harry's birthday, Mrs. Weasley made a floating snitch cake.  While mine can't fly I thought it turned out pretty fun.  All I did was use Wilton's Sports ball cake pan.  I made a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting colored a pale yellow then dusted with gold shimmer.  For the wings I used thin skewer sticks and glued on vellum cut into a wing shape.

2.  Pumpkin Pasties--

Pie crust**
1 cup canned pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp ginger
dash of nutmeg

Combine the filling ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir well.
* For the pie crust you can use a large premade unbaked one and cut into small rounds, make your own dough, or as we have begun to do, go to a Mexican market and buy premade and cut uncooked baking empanada rounds.  These are perfect and extremely easy to use. 
Spoon equal amounts of filling into center of each round.  Fold over and seal edge with egg-white wash and crimp edge with a fork.  Cut 3 slits into top.  Brush tops with remaining egg-white wash and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350 for 25-30 minutes until golden (or whatever pie dough calls for).  Cool and serve.

3.  Mad-eyes (Oreo truffles)-- Annicka made these tasty and rich little guys.  They are super good and can be decorated any which way.  We just did them as Mad-eyes in honor of his death in Harry Potter 7.

1 package Oreo cookies, finely crushed.
1 (8oz) package cream cheese
toppings of choice

Crush oreos in a ziploc bag with a rolling pin or in a food processor.  Mix together cream cheese and Oreo crumbs and form into balls.  Dip in melted chocolate or white chocolate as we did.  Refrigerate at least 1 hour until firm.  If you want to sprinkle with cookie crumbs, sprinkles, etc. do that before refrigeration.

4.  Butterbeer-- This is Kellie's wonderful recipe.  This one serves 2-4 people but it is easy to make a bunch and then just add cream soda to each serving.  When we make a big batch wekeep it warm and just pour about 1/8-1/4 cup of the creamy mix into a cup and pour over with (unheated) cream soda.


1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup butterscotch topping
2 tablespoons whipped butter (room temp)
1 1/2 cup vanilla cream soda

Combine condensed milk, butterscotch topping and butter. Heat mixture until butter has melted and incorporated into mixture. Heat cream soda and add mixture, stir thoroughly

5.  Polyjuice Potion Punch--  This is the easy Mormon sherbert punch.  I just used a carton of Raspberry sherbet with 1 L. of regular 7 up and 1 of diet 7 up. if foams and fizzles.

6.  Treacle Fudge--  This I made as more of a novelty item for a British flair to the party.  Not my personal favorite.

1/2 cup evaporated milk
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 Tbsp. butter
1/3 cup treacle or molasses

In a large bowl mix milk, brown sugar, and salt.  In a saucepan melt chocolate and butter together.  Remove from heat and add molassess.  Add the chocolate mixture to the milk mixture and pour into a pan to cool.  Cut into squares and serve.

Drinking our butterbeers.

Harry Potter Party Food 2010-Savory dishes

Previous Harry Potter foods can be found here. 


Another Harry Potter movie has come and gone and here are some of the delightful foods we ate.  This post will be main dishes. 

Since it's getting cold outside I decided to make some soups/stews.  I adapted these recipes out of the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook.  These are adapted recipes to serve more people and make into a crock pot.  I highly recommend checking out the original book for some interesting and fun recipes.

Kreacher's French Onion Soup

2 large onions

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 cup white sugar

8 cups beef broth

1 tsp salt

Slice onions into thin round rings.   In a crockpot stir together beef broth, sugar, pepper, and salt.  Add onion slices seperating them into individual rings.  Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3-4 hours.  Onions should carmalize.  Top with cheesy croutons.

Croutons:  Thinly slice a baguette.  Butter and sprinkle with parmesean cheese.  Toast in the oven under the broiler for a couple of minutes keeping an eye on them so they don't burn.  Float atop soup when served.

Mrs. Weasley's Beef Stew

2 lbs chuck steak cut into 1 inch pieces

1 onion chopped

1 (14oz) can Chicken broth

1 cup water

1 cup coca-cola

2 Tbsp Tomato paste

2 tsp ground sage

salt and pepper to taste

juice of 1 lemon

6 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes

4 medium sized carrots, peeled and sliced

Brown the beef in 2 Tbsp veggie oil to seal in the juice (can also brown onions at this step which I forgot to do).    Chop your vegetables.  Mix together broth, water, and coca-cola in a large crock pot (I believe mine is a 10 quart).  Add meat, tomato paste, onions, potatos, and carrots (if making this in a pot instead of crock-pot,  it says to simmer meat and seasonings for an hour first before adding veggies).  Pour over lemon juice and add sage.  Cook on high for 4-6 hours until meat is cooked through and veggies are tender.  Monitor for thickness/wetness and add flour or cornstarch as needed to thicken water, or more water if getting too dry.  I sprinkled about 1/4 cup of flour over top when there was about an hour left and stirred.  Serve with bread and season with salt and pepper to taste.  The main way I changed this dish besides using a crock pot is that the original calls for 1/4 cup of chopped prunes.  Wait, what?  Prunes in stew? Must be a British or Irish thing.

Another Savory dish I made was Snapes Stuffed Mushrooms.  I previously posted that recipe here.

Harry Potter Party-Games/crafts

For our Harry Potter party we played a few games and made some crafts.

We made Snitch Christmas ornaments inspired by the ones I found here.    Now is the time to do this as plastic gold Christmas balls are really cheap.  Basically you just hot glue some sparkly pipe cleaner to the back of the ball and form wings.

 This is an awesome Owlery garland made by the wonderful Annicka.  They were a perfect little detail that I love so much during parties.

 We made up a fishing game to win the sword of Gryffindor.  The sword was just a foam one with hot-glued jewels all over it.  The fish are just cute laminated fish (thanks Annicka) with paperclips on them and we had a magnet tied to a pole.  On the back of the fish were the numbers 1, 2, and 3 which corresponded to the different types of prizes you could chose from.

 "Don't Eat Pete" is a game where you put a piece of candy on each square.  One player leaves the room while the others decide which square is "pete".  The object of the game is to get as much candy as possible without getting pete.  If the player grabs pete everyone yells, "Don't eat Pete!"  In this case pete is Peter Pettigrew.  We have played this game many times in a wide variety including The Office, Star Wars, Dumbledore's Army, etc. 



Harry Potter Mania-Party Food

Lots of food was served at the party...

1. Pumpkin pasties

2. Butterbeer

3. Snake Cake

4. Leaky Cauldron pinwheels

5. Potion Fruit Dips (Cream Cheese with brown sugar, or marshmellow cream, or brown sugar and health bar pieces)

6. Snaper-doodle cookies (Snickerdoodles---except made with self laothing and misery)

7. Dragon Toes (Cocktail weenies and BBQ sauce)

If you want a specific recipe leave a comment with your email address and I will give it to you...or if you want my entire HP cookbook, leave me a comment about that and your email and I can email it to you as a word document.

Harry Potter Mania-Party pieces

So my Harry Potter party was a success....here are some of the many ideas that went down.

Honey Duke treats:
1. Bertie botts every flavor beans. I just bought some cheap-brand gourmet jellybeans and packaged them into these candy favor bags from walmart. I bought 2 small boxes of JellyBelly brand Bean-boozeled beans to mix in some "Suprising" flavors.
2. Chocolate frogs. I bought this mini frog mold off Amazon.com and just used candy melts. This mold also had some toads which would have been perfect for Peppermint toads.
3. Droobles best blowing gum. Just bagged up some bubble gum and slapped on a label.
4. Chocolate wands. Dipped some pretzel sticks with more candy melts. Super easy and fast. Swirled on some white chocolate melts for extra flair.


Weasley Wizard Wheezes:

1. Nosebleed Nougut. Just bagged up some strawberry cream Trolly Gummies.

2. Fainting Fancies. More Trolly pastel gummy rocks.

3. Firework Whizbangs. Used the idea from July Family Fun for this one.

Monster Book of monsters. Super easy and only cost a few dollars... Just need a sheet of fur (Got mine at Joanns...didn't even alter it), 2 googly eyes that are hot glued to the fur, and some red and white felt (also from Joanns) cut into teeth and hot glued to the fur. Slide this fur mess onto a book and wrapped a belt around it.

Felix Felicus key chains. Gold glitter in little bottles (Mine were empty Zofran bottles from work with size 0 corks). printed a label on vellum, sent it through my Xyron sticker machine and stuck it on there. Used the smallest round hoop screws and bought my keychains from Joanns in bulk. Another very cheap idea if the bottles are free.

Wands...these were made by my sister Alyssa from paper, Elmer's glue, hot glue and paint. Essentially she rolled the paper at an angle sealing it with Elmer's glue and then textured a handle on with hot glue. When dried she painted it with a variety of colors.

Homemade Tattoos... you can buy tattoo printer paper online. These were designs and phrases drawn by my sisters. They were just extra fun.

Quizzes...I just printed the HP6 quiz from the Scholastic website...leaving one with multiple choice as the O.W.L. level quiz and one without for the N.E.W.T. level.

Potion bottles. I have been buying strange and interesting bottles and vases from thrift stores the past few months for decoration. Then we filled them with herbs, colored water, oil, or a mix of those ingredients.

-I also made mini potions bottles like the Felix bottles for my healer costume.

Harry Potter Cardboard cutout from Zurchers party store...only cost $20 and added a very fun touch/photo opportunity...added some signs mentioned in book 6 and you have a scene.

July 4th crafts

I really love the 4th of July and am always looking for fun ways to detail the holiday. When I got my July Family Fun magazine last month, I fell in love with these:

Firecracker Favors (I am actually turning mine into Weasly Wizard Wizbangs for my HP party)

Basically you take rolled candy like Life Savers, re-wrap them in patriotic paper, and stick these cute little picks in the top (I found my pics at Jo-ann's...they are by Wilton).

For original instructions go here.

Want more crafts? Check these out:

Martha's Star Spangled crafts

Make and Takes has some fun fruit kababs and a craft roundup with lots of links to good ideas.

Harry Potter Party

Getting ready for a grand Half blood prince premier party.

More details to follow but currently a listy:

1. Potions anyone?
2. St. Mungo healers costume (for me and my fellow nurses who are attending)
3. Giant snake cake
4. Felix Felicious
5. Chocolate frogs and other delights from honeydukes
6. Memories
7. Fireworks and other delights from the Weasly twins Joke shop...