Harry Potter Marathon Weekend: Robin and the Goblet of Butterbeer

This weekend, the dark forces of cold weather and laziness combined in a epic battle culminating in Robin and I deciding to spend our weekend watching all 8 Harry Potter Movies (that's about 20 hours of pure awesome). Unfortunately, we couldn't spend the weekend just watching movies; we also had to get our proper daily nutritional requirements of butter and sugar. As such, we decided we should make butterbeer (and we then decided we should go out and get rum, as it's what our potions professor would've wanted).

"Omg today's going to be so intense"- Robin describing our Sunday of The Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows I & II.

Butterbeer
Recipe adapted from The News Network Who Must Not Be Named
Servings: 4-6
Time: 1 hour (inactive for 50 minutes)

The secret is butter and sugar!

Butterbeer
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 tbsp water
6 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
Pure Vanilla extract (optional)
Rum (optional, but come on!)
2 bottles of cream soda

Whipped Topping
1 cup heavy whipping cream
4 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
Cinnamon

This is shockingly the light part

1. Begin a truly awesome weekend involving a Harry Potter marathon.
2. Decide to spice things up around movie 4.
3. Make the butterbeer. Start by combining the brown sugar and water in a saucepan at medium heat. Bring it to a gentle boil and cook, stirring often. If you want to be fancy, you can let it get to 240 F on a candy thermometer, or you can just stop it once it looks like magic has happened.
4. Stir in the butter, salt and heavy whipping cream. Remove from heat and let come down to room temp.
5. While waiting for the butter sugar to come down to room temp, make up the whipped topping. Combine the heavy whipping cream, dark brown sugar, vanilla extract and a sprinkle of cinnamon in a mixer and ramp it up to high speed until peaks start to form. Cover and refrigerate until ready.
6. Get really excited that it's finally time to mix everything together.
7. Put ~ 3 tbsp of the sugar butter in a glass. Top with a small amount of cream soda and mix well. 
8. Add 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract if desired and the necessary amount of rum to convince you that these aren't just very empty calories as they will be helping you feel more magical.
9. Add additional cream soda (about half a bottle total per butterbeer). 
10. Drop some whipped cream on the cool mystical foam layer and enjoy. I recommend letting it sit for a couple of minutes to further mix.
11. Watch many, many more hours of Harry Potter.

The Stages of Mixing Butterbeer:

Try to not be tempted by the butter sugar mixture and avoid stopping at the diabetes shot portion.

Get the butter sugar mixed in well with the cream soda. 

Add more cream soda (and booze) to balance things out. Stop when you have enough awesome foam.

Top with the whipped cream. Bonus points if it kind of looks like the sorting hat.

The butterbeer was everything we could have hoped for as it was exactly what we imagined it would taste like. This refreshing, sugary treat resides somewhere in the land of a float, but is made even more amazing by the presence of rum. The true highlight (aside from the obvious butter sugar) was the powerful presence of vanilla, which really helped the whipped topping stand out.

I found myself quickly downing my butterbeer as it was far too delicious to show silly muggle traits like restraint. The only problem is that it does fall a little on the heavy side meaning you have to stop after 2 or so. This really was the perfect way to spend a wintery (for Houston at least) weekend with the girl who introduced me to Harry Potter.

Additional Highlights of Harry Potterthon 2014:

Discovering that the internet is just as perverted and gross as I thought when attempting to find out who the actress who played Ginny got engaged to from the Potterverse.

Red wine staining my walls to fit perfectly with the darker tone of the final movies. Robin merely laughed after my recliner fell over and this happened. Oh, well, it's just a security deposit.

Robin and Terry's Definitive Ranking of Movies and Books

Books (best to worst)

Robin: 3, 4, 6, 7, 5, 2, 1

Terry: 4, 6, 3, 7, 5, 2, 1

Movies (best to worst)

Robin: Refuses to give a definitive ranking of the movies because "In our relationship I read more and you watch movies more"

Terry: 4, 3, 7B, 6, 5, 7A, 2, 1

A Very Vegan Christmas: The Drunk Prussian Champagne Punch

Champagne punch: it's not just for drunk girls at bridal showers anymore!

We can all agree that champagne is a delicious and bubbly way to celebrate any occasion. But if you're like my sister and I, you've probably thought to yourself "I bet this would taste better with vodka." Well, spend your life wondering no more with our amazing Drunk Prussian (conveniently just in time for your New Year's party).

As you grow older, you look for drinks you can actually enjoy instead of just something to get you drunk. You start to wear nice clothes and drink fancy things like scotch or various fruits that end in "tini" rather than spending your night huddled around a keg. Well this champagne punch gives you the best of both worlds: a tasty drink that will get you quite happy.

The Drunk Prussian

Servings: One large trifle (or punch bowl)

Time: 5 minutes

1 bottle of champagne (extra dry cheap stuff)

1/2 liter ginger ale

1 pint pina colada Italian ice

1 pint soy delicious vanilla ice cream

1 cup vanilla vodka

Orange peel for garnish

The classiest line-up of deliciousness ever.

1. Put the Italian ice and soy ice cream at the bottom of a punch bowl. 
2. Top with the vodka and cheap champagne (trust me you won't be able to tell the difference from the good stuff) and ginger ale to melt and form a frothy top.
3. Add some orange peel for color.

The magical soy ice cream froth

With this punch, you will surely ring in the New Year right. The vanilla infusion from the ice cream and vodka blend splendidly with the bubbly delight of the champagne and ginger ale.  The true fireworks (yay themes) come from the incredible soy ice cream froth that floats to the top surface and provides an intriguing layered drink. Another great thing about this punch is that it's a rare holiday drink that vegans can enjoy since they're usually left to perish from thirst thanks to eggnog and punches filled with sherbert. With this in your party throwing arsenal, you can finally have a New Year's to rival that from the first season of the O.C. (who am I kidding nothing could ever live up to it).

No New Years will ever be this dramatic and awesome. Every year I run up the stairs at 11:59 in slow motion for good measure.

Just be careful with this punch, like any good drink from our hometown (I'm looking at you, hand grenade) it doesn't taste nearly as alcoholic as it is. Use discretion lest you want to regret who you kiss at midnight.

Mint Juleps with Mint "Caviar"

The shrimp and grits I made with Courtney wouldn't be complete without a nice Southern drink that makes you wish you were sipping it on your back porch during a hot summer's night.

Mint Juleps with Mint "Caviar"

Servings: 1

Time: 2 minutes

4 fresh mint sprigs

1 shot of bourbon

1 tsp powdered sugar

2 tsp water

Mint "caviar" (see below)

Ice

1. Dissolve the powdered sugar in water then add and muddle mint leaves.
2. Pour in the shot of bourbon and ice.
3. Spoon in the "caviar".

The only way I could have enjoyed this drink more was if I was sitting at the Kentucky Derby in a white suit stroking my giant white mustache (ok, I've never seen anyone in the South actually do that, but it seems like it'd be awesome).

Mint "Caviar"

Science!

Time: 10 minutes

200 mL low calcium water (not from tap)

Fresh mint

1.6 g sodium alginate

2 drops Green food coloring

250 mL water

1.3 g calcium chloride

1. Prepare the calcium bath by mixing 250 mL water with the calcium chloride. Shake to dissolve and refrigerate it.
2. Boil the fresh mint in the low calcium water for about 10 minutes until the water changes color.
3. Mix the mint water, food coloring and sodium alginate in a blender until all the alginate has been incorporated.
4. Using a syringe, slowly drop the mint mixture into the calcium bath.
5. Collect the spheres in a food strainer and rinse with low calcium water.

They only taste a little bit like toothpaste!

This mint "caviar" is a type of spherification, which is one of the pillars of molecular gastronomy. The ingredients might be chemicals, but don't worry, they're safe for consumption. You can find them at specialty stores like Surfa's or order them on Amazon (for much cheaper). 

Basically, a spherification is a thin gel encapsulating a liquid. Think of them kind of like a really neat gusher fruit snack. When the negatively charged alginate bond with the positively charged calcium ions in the water, the various polymers of alginate are pulled closer together to form a dense gel network. 

List of things to NEVER do again: look up "gushers" on google image search.

The reverse of this process can also be done to give large "ravioli" like spheres. For this to work, you enrich your liquid with calcium and then dip it in an alginate bath. Both of these techniques can be tricky and take a lot of practice. pH plays a large role, so not all juices will form spheres on their own.

Thus endeth the science lesson. Feel free to wake up now, wipe the drool off your desk and treat yourself to a mint julep.