Home-made Butterbeer

"Betty bought some butter, but the butter was so bitter,

So Betty bought some more butter to make herself some butterbeer."

J.K. Rowling, the author who wrote down Harry Potter's story, described the foamilicious drink, butterbeer, as tasting "a little bit like less-sickly butterscotch" .

We all love butterbeer and, personally, it's my favorite wizarding world drink. Therefore, here I am, Hiya Debnath, the founder, compiler, publisher and one of the editors of this magazine, with my home-made recipe for the foamy brew.

Fun fact: - Butterbeer or "Buttered beere" was made in the Tudor times (1485 to 1603, during the reign of three generations of monarchs from the House of Tudor, an English royal dynasty of Welsh origin, in England) from beer, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cloves and butter.

Of course, the easiest way to chug the popular wizarding world drink is to head down to "The Leaky Cauldron" in Diagon Alley, Madam Rosmerta's "The Three Broomsticks" pub or the slightly more shady "Hog's Head Inn" owned by Aberforth Dumbledore on Hogsmeade weekends. You can find a pint sold for two sickles in any of these places.

But if you are a bit of a potion master or an expert cook and would like to get more creative or personalized versions, here's exactly what you need to egg yourself on.

To start with,

gather your ingredients (serves 1-2) : - 

Cream soda - 1 cup (8 oz)

Butterscotch syrup - 1/2 cup (4 oz) 

Softened, unsalted butter - 1 tablespoon (1/2 oz)

(Softening butter simply means taking the butter to room temperature, instead of using the cold, frozen solid butter. Cut it into small cubes and leave it aside for 15 minutes to soften it. Softening butter makes it more malleable. But make sure your butter is not warm or too melted as it will then lose its ability to cream and hold air when beaten. )

Fresh heavy cream - 1 cup (8 oz). This is optional.

Powdered brown sugar - 1/4 cup (2 oz) or more to taste. This is optional.

(Oz = ounce/ounces)

Next, here's the actual process: -

Take a bowl and pour the butterscotch syrup into it, leaving exactly two teaspoons of the butterscotch syrup aside. Then add 1/2 tablespoon (1/4 oz) of your softened butter to it and combine with a whisk. If you enjoy the slightly tipsy feeling with the alcoholic version of butterbeer, switch exactly half of the butterscotch syrup for 1-2 oz of butterscotch liquor in this step. You can also leave the butterscotch syrup as it is in the recipe, and add a few tablespoons of vanilla vodka or flavored rum into the mix. Set this aside.

Pour the cream soda into a glass, add the above mixture and combine slowly into it, while stirring continuously.

Take the mug from "Muggle" and fill it in with the resulting concoction, leaving about 1/4th from the top of the mug empty.

During the chilly winter months, you can enjoy this directly after adding the whipped cream topping, but if you want to turn up the heat, you can add your softened, unsalted butter to 1/2 cup (4 oz) of whole milk and 1/2 tablespoon (1/4 oz) of powdered brown sugar, then heat it together, whisking continuously to avoid clumping and add the butterscotch syrup to it after turning off the heat, then combine and pour in the cream soda stirring continuously.

For the ones living in the Southern Hemisphere, I'd recommend the frozen or chilly, refreshing version of butterbeer. To make it, just follow the original recipe, then add in some ice cubes or a few tablespoons of frozen vanilla ice cream into the mix.

Optional step - Then add the fresh heavy cream in a separate chilled bowl (do not use the Chilling Charm if you are not comfortable with it, instead put the bowl inside the freezer, or dunk it in a tub of ice cubes for sometime) and then add the two teaspoons of butterscotch syrup that you left aside, the remaining softened, unsalted butter and the powdered sugar to taste. Using a hand whisk, whip until stiff peaks begin to form (if properly whisked, the resulting whipped cream shouldn't drop off your whisk). Do not overbeat the whipped cream or it will form clumps, and you may end up with more butter. You will know you have overwhipped if your whipped cream first starts to turn grainy, then turns into butter. However, you can fix that by adding more cold, fresh whipped cream. Then, fill the whipped cream into a piper (if you do not have one, cut a corner from a plastic bag and replace it with a piping nozzle to make your own piping bag), then pipe the whipped cream on top of the concoction in your mug. Top it with a few more drizzles of butterscotch syrup or drizzle intricately with caramel flavoring to form beautiful patterns. I often love to garnish with broken or whole cinnamon sticks, or powdered nutmeg, or sometimes just throw in chocolate chips. I also often like to sprinkle chilled coconut shavings on top of the dollop of whipped cream, provided that it is available for use.

The mug of butterbeer should look delicious now. Relish it and let me know if it is yummy and good for your tummy. Cheers.

Sources: - 1. Recipes. net

2.https://lilluna.com/butterbeer/

(Lil' Luna)

My Blood-Brewing Cauldrons

These blood-brewing cauldrons look like the spookiest horror that could happen in the Potions Dungeon. Read on to see how you can make these cauldrons yourself and brew blood in them.

Cupcakes for the cauldron: -

To start with,

gather your ingredients (Serves 6):

All purpose flour - 1/2 cup (2 and 1/4 oz)

Sugar - 1/2 cup (3 and 1/2 oz)

Cocoa powder - 3 tablespoons (1 and 1/2 oz)

Baking soda - 1/2 teaspoon (1/12 oz)

Baking powder - 1/4 teaspoon (1/24 oz)

Kosher salt - 1/4 teaspoon (1/24 oz)

Egg - 1

Buttermilk - 1/4 cup (2 oz)

Strong black coffee - 1/4 cup (2 oz)

Vegetable oil - 1/8 cup (1 oz)

Pure vanilla extract - 1 teaspoon (1/6 oz)

Chocolate chips - 1 cup (6 oz)

Butter - 4 tablespoons (2 oz)

(Oz = ounce/ounces)

Equipments - Muffin tins, cupcake liners, also some waxing paper

The cauldron smelting process: -

Sift all the dry ingredients, except the coffee, together into a bowl. Mix well.

In another bowl, combine all the wet ingredients together with a hand whisk. Add the coffee and mix well.

Pour half of the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients mix. Mix well again, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the remaining wet ingredients and mix well. The final mixture should not be too thick.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Insert a toothpick or the tooth of a fork into the center of at least one cupcake. When you take it out, it should come out clean without any stain from the cupcake mixture. If it does not come out clean, bake for another 2 more minutes and try again. Repeat until a toothpick or the tooth of a fork inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes down.

You can also make vanilla cupcakes instead, but for that you will have to leave out the cocoa powder and the coffee, and add a little more vanilla extract for a more intense vanilla flavor.

Melt the chocolate chips with the butter in a double boiler, while stirring continuously. Ensure no water gets into the melted chocolate or else it will clump. Pour out the melted chocolate and cool ever so slightly so the chocolate doesn't completely thicken but is not too liquid either. If you accidentally thicken your chocolate too much, simply melt it again in the double boiler.

Usually your cupcakes are wide at the top and slightly narrower at the bottom, so flip those so that the narrower side is on top. Place the upside-down cupcake on another cupcake which is the right way up. Stick the two together using some of your sticky melted chocolate.

Using a sharp knife or cupcake corer, core out the cupcakes stuck together in a conical shape by pointing the knife towards the center and dragging it in a circle along the edge of the upper cupcake. This should leave a cavity in the center that looks like the almost conical shaped inside of a cauldron. Feel free to be creative with the coring to get the correct cauldron-shaped cavity, and use your knife to make the outer shape of the creation resemble a cauldron as much as possible. If you are not a great sculptor with a knife, just coring on the inside will suffice.

Dip the bottom half of the cupcake into the melted chocolate. It should look shiny and glazed. You can paint the melted chocolate onto the bottom half of the cauldron or the entire cauldron if you like using a spatula or the blade of a knife. Pipe a rim of slightly thickened melted chocolate on the top opening of the cauldron. You can use a piper or a piping bag similar to the one I used in my butterbeer recipe above. You can dust edible gold glitter onto your cauldron or use a paintbrush to paint it all over the surface with edible gold paint, which is available in shops, to get a golden cauldron. You could also spray the edible gold paint onto the cauldron if you like.

You can stick three chocolate chips in the shape of a triangle with the help of melted chocolate under the cauldron, for feet, but I personally find that the cauldron is more stable without the feet.

On a waxing paper, pipe out a thin handle for the cauldron. Let it set until it's solid. Then peel off the waxing paper. It's very delicate, so handle it carefully. It's a little difficult to get the handles the right size, so I just make some roughly sized ones and stick them to the side of the cauldron with melted chocolate as a decoration instead of on the top or on the rim. If you are making a golden cauldron, you will need to paint the handle with edible gold paint too.

Since we used two cupcakes for each cauldron, you should have 3 cauldrons now.

Now, let's put blood into the cauldrons. Or thickly congealed blood to be more precise. How would it feel to brew a blood red potion on Halloween?

Strawberry compote for the blood red potion filling: 

To start with,

gather your ingredients (Serves 3, should fill atleast 3 of your cauldrons): -

Strawberries - 1 pound

Granulated sugar or refined caster sugar - 3 tablespoons (1 and 1/2 oz)

Lemon juice - 1 and 1/2 teaspoon (1/4 oz)

(Oz = ounce/ounces)

The potion brewing recipe: -

Core and remove the stems from the strawberries, then slice into halves or quarters or smaller slices as you like. The smaller the slices, the quicker the compote will cook, and the larger the slices, the chunkier the compote will be.

In a saucepan, add the sliced strawberries, the sugar and the lemon juice, mix gently and let it cook on medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, especially to help dissolve the chunks in the strawberry compote. The lemon juice brings out the red bloodier color. You can cook further to achieve a thicker consistency as desired.

Let the compote cool, then spoon it into the cauldron, filling each cauldron completely up to the rim with the compote. You can add a dash of red food coloring to the strawberry compote if you like, to enhance its blood red color.

There you have brewed the perfect Bloody Halloween potion in your cauldron.

Source I drew my inspiration from and referred to - https://www.pastryaffair.com/blog/2011/7/12/cauldron-cakes.html

Happy Halloween and goodbye for now. Spooky dreams. Sleep well tonight.

- Hiya Debnath, journalist, editor, compiler and publisher, Hogwarts Monthly Magazine.