The food of this party was well, probably the best part of it all. You read about all the different foods in Harry Potter, but that's usually it. You're always wondering what Butterbeer tastes like or if all those sweets on the train are all they're made out to be. So Katie and I decided to bring those foods to life as best as we could, with our time, resources, and money (remember, we're poor college students!). We spent so much time on all the food, but it was all so very worth it. I don't take credit for any of the recipes because we found pretty much all of them online--just tweaked a little bit--so if you want to make any these foods, I'll link to them so you can bring the magic of Harry Potter to your home.
So first, the drinks:
Gillywater:
We knew we were going to need some kind of a drink besides the Butterbeer and Firewhiskey that people could have and that everyone would like. So we got some Invisible Kool-aid from the grocery store that looks like water but tastes like Kool-aid. I looked up "harry potter drinks" online and Gillywater was one of the things that came up because apparently it's mentioned in the books once or something. So all the Gillywater was was Invisible Kool-aid. Easy enough.
Cost: $0.30 (two kool-aid packages) + free (already had sugar and water) = $0.30
Firewhiskey:
We decided we wanted Firewhiskey mostly just so everyone could taste it and we could have some fun with it. All we did for this was mix Ginger Ale with some Tabasco sauce. I'll admit, I never tried it, but it was hilarious to see everyone's reactions when they did, because it obviously wasn't what they were expecting! It made your throat burn for about 10 minutes afterward so kind of funny. The drink fit the name perfectly!
Cost: $2 (two 2-liter bottles of ginger ale) + $0.69 (tabasco sauce) = $2.69
Butterbeer!:
Wow. Words cannot describe how delicious and perfect butterbeer was. It was everything that you wanted it to be from reading the books and such. Oh, it was soooo good! This one took a little bit longer to make but I think we used the best recipe on the internet we found. There were some recipes where you could just use a few ingredients to make something kind of like it, but we wanted the real thing! So we used
this recipe to make it, and I would definitely recommend the recipe to anyone who wants to try Butterbeer. It was so legit and so good. Go home and make it and I promise you won't be disappointed. The only thing we left out of the recipe was the apple cider vinegar because we didn't know where it was in the store and it might have been a little pricey. Not a surprise to us, the Butterbeer was the first thing that we ran out of (we had two pots of it) and it was definitely the favorite of the drinks, if not of all the food. I'm telling you, it was great!
 |
| Trying Butterbeer for the first time. That smile on my face was because I was drinking heaven :) |
Cost: $2 (two 2-liter bottles of cream soda) + $1 (margarine--in place of butter) + Free (already had salt) + $4 (brown sugar) + $3 (cream) = $10 (maybe a little much for a drink but totally worth it for Butterbeer!)
And now for the food! :)
Acid Pops:
I got the idea of these from
here. A lot of our recipes came from
The Pastry Affair, because her site kept popping up in searches for "harry potter food" and they were definitely the best quality recipes by far. I'd definitely recommend the site because she has a lot yummy and cute pastries, and the picture quality is great! The recipe said to use Pop Rocks, but they were a little bit more expensive and we thought we were going to need a lot. So instead we got those boxes of rainbow nerds that you can get for a dollar, crushed them up, dipped the suckers in water and then rolled it around in the crushed Nerds. These were sooo good. They were pretty sour, because you got the inside part of the nerd right away, but they were a nice treat for people to suck on while socializing or something. :)
Cost: $2 (two bags of lollipops) + $2 (two boxes of nerds) = $4
Chocolate Frogs:
All the recipes for chocolate frogs we found online were like making actual chocolate frogs with a mold and we did not have time or the resources to do that. So we got some of the Haribo gummy frogs and then dipped half of the them in chocolate (just from chocolate chips). You wouldn't think so, but gummy+chocolate=delish! This was probably one of my favorites of the food items!
Cost: $5.16 (4 bags of Haribo frogs @ $1.29/bag) + $1.50 (bag of chocolate chips) = $6.76
Licorice Wands:
We wanted to dip the wands in chocolate like done
here, but we ran out of chocolate and time, so we just got Red Vines and put them out as is. Maybe another time we'll make these again and dip them in chocolate!
Cost: $3 (two bags of redvines)
Cockroach Clusters:
This recipe also came from
here and all we did with this was melt chocolate chips and then mix chow-mein noodles in the chocolate. Super easy! And the noodles were pretty tasteless so the clusters as a whole tasted delicious because it was like crunchy chocolate..yum :)
Cost: $3 (two bags of chow-mein noodles) + $1.50 (bag of chocolate chips) = $4.50
Sorting Hats:
These were our own invention. With the Cauldron Cakes below, you have to cut out a portion of the cupcake so we were left with all these pointy cake things that looked like hats! So we went to the grocery store to get some oreos, stuck the cake part on with melted chocolate and called them sorting hats. There is actually no food in the HP books called "Sorting Hats" but we can be creative, right? :)
Cost: Free (cake insides) + $3 (one package of regular Oreo cookies) = $3
Pumpkin Pasties:
Mmmm, these were good! They don't look super appetizing in the picture, but I promise they tasted delicious. We found the recipe searching online and used
this one. It seemed like all the other recipes were copying it so we went back to the original source. The thing we changed was that we just got those cans that have 10 uncooked biscuits in them, rolled them out and used that for the dough. It was a lot cheaper and easier than making our own! The Pumpkin Pasties took a while to make so while these were in the oven or cooking we were working on something else. Oh and we doubled the recipe to have more for our party guests.
Cost: $4 (two cans of pumpkin) + $4 (two cans of evaporated milk) + Free (we had everything else at home) = $8
Cauldron Cakes:
Aren't they so cute? These might have been my favorites (and many other people's) just because they look exactly like their name! These also took a while, and a lot of chocolate, but were very yummy and fun. I especially like the 3 chocolate chip "feet" at the bottom of the cauldron. We got the recipe for these from
here. The only thing we changed was that we filled them with whipped cream instead of the marshmallow filling because once again, it was easier and cheaper. Super fun! This recipe was also doubled.
Cost: $2.60 (two cake mixes) + $3 (two bags of chocolate chips) + $5 (two cans of whipped cream--we didn't use it all though) =$10.60
Atomic Popcorn:
I'm sorry, for some reason I didn't take a picture of the popcorn! I just made my family's special recipe of popcorn as another filler food just so people had something to eat. I thought I was going to have to make a lot of batches but I ended up only having to make one batch, which was great. I just called it Atomic Popcorn, because I saw that name somewhere online and figured it fit the Harry Potter-esque food name.
The recipe for the popcorn is super easy and as follows:
1 1/2 tablespoons of canola or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon of coconut oil (this is optional if you don't have any--its expensive!)
1/2 cup of popcorn kernals
A little more than 1/2 teaspoon of popcorn salt
Put it all in a popcorn popper (or you could try a pot and cover the lid when the popcorn starts popping) on the stove on about medium-high heat, and keep stirring until all the popcorn is about done being popped or you can't stir anymore. Super easy and really good. Popcorn is big in my family and I probably eat it a few times a week haha.
Cost: Free (I already had all the ingredients)
Most of the food all gone at the end of the party!
Whew! That was a long post! And the food was definitely the thing that took the most time. But it was totally worth it because everyone was super impressed with it all and thought it was really good!
[Budget]
Invitations: $18
All the food: $52.85
Total so Far: $70.85
Tomorrow I'm going to be talking about our decorations and the set-up, so definitely come back to read...*hint* we had REAL animals there. Promise. Told ya you want to read about it!! ;)
To read the other posts about the party, click on these links:
