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 Gluten-Free Christmas: Cucidatis

For our California Christmases, one tradition stands above all others- the sugar bomb known as the cucidati. A staple of our childhood ever since the St. Joseph's altars of our Catholic school days, these fig cookies joyously came back into our lives several years ago in one amazing holiday season that saw at least 3 batches being made and promptly enjoyed.

This year, we had the added challenge of transitioning our favorite diabetic coma in convenient handheld form into a gluten-free treat. Would the cucidati successfully make this leap in desserty evolution, or would Christmas be ruined?

Cucidatis
Adapted from Food.com
Previously seen here in gluteny form
Servings: 12-16 thumbprint cookies
Time: 90 minutes (inactive for 45 of that)

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour
3/4 tbsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegan veggie shortening
1/2 large egg substitute (Ener-G)
1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup soy milk + more for icing
Fig Jam
Powdered sugar
Almond extract
Colored sprinkles

What they normally look like without thumbprint intervention.

1. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.
2. Stir in the sugar.
3. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender or cut it into small pieces and mash into the flour mixture by hand until it resembles corn meal.
4. Beat the egg substitute, vanilla and soy milk together in a separate bowl.
5. Add the egg mixture to the flour in a stand mixer and mix for about 3 minutes until a soft dough forms.
6. Divide into two pieces and refrigerate in plastic wrap for 45 minutes.
7. Preheat the oven to 375 F.
8. Roll one piece of dough out at a time into 12" squares on a floured surface.
9. Get increasingly angry as the dough continually breaks apart.
10. Have your sister save Christmas by forming them into thumbprint cookies instead (make a small round cookie and press down on the center with your thumb).
11. Fill the thump print in with fig jam.
12. Place on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until they begin to golden.
13. Let cool on a wire rack.
14. Mix soy milk with copious amounts of powdered sugar and ~1 tsp of almond extract (or really however much you want that almond finish. Just be careful. A little goes a long way). The end result should be smooth and fairly thick.
15. Ice the tops of each cucidati cookie and sprinkle with fun colors. Be sure to sprinkle them quickly before the icing dries and magnificently repels the sprinkles off.
16. Enjoy a minimum of 4 at a time and then curse the terrible sugar crash.

Literally everyone wanted to get their hands on them.

Initially, all hope seemed lost. Two attempts at making cucidatis proved unsuccessful, and our bodies were shaking with the need for sugar. Then, my sister got a truly inspired idea. These cucidatis didn't have to look like cucidatis, they simply had to taste like them! (I'm pretty sure we saw a light bulb magically appear.) By turning these into thumbprint cookies, we were able to stuff our mouths jam-packed with all the sugar our inner child ever desired. Now, I have just under a year to perfect these as a gluten-free dessert. My current thought is that the dough just isn't as well formed with the gluten-free all-purpose flour and other alternative flours need to be explored (with almond flour being the suspected savior). Unfortunately, this means I have batches upon batches of cucidatis to consume. I just hope I'm up to the challenge...

Lowercase "q" enjoys his first Christmas and his awesome new balcony yard

Our Very Vegan Gluten-Free Christmas surpassed all my initially skeptical expectations. We had several amazing days of fine meals, family, and Christmas classics (like The X-Files). Do we really have to wait all year for it to come again?

Pop Tart Cake

After months of sugar laden baking adventures (I really need to remember to schedule a dentist appointment sometime soon when I'm not deathly afraid of what they are going to find.), the Robin Farewell Baking Tour 2012 reaches its final stop. While it may have seemed fitting to go out on yet another perfect pie for the crazy pie train, we decided to instead make something completely different: homemade pop tarts! Fate smiled down upon our absurditude and yielded a most ridiculous dessert that would make even the most classically trained French Pastry chefs quiver in their aprons.

Pop Tart Cake
Adapted from A Golden Afternoon
Servings: 6-8
Time: 45 minutes

One of these things is not like the other

Pastry
2 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter, cut
1 large egg (Plus one for brushing)
2 tbsp milk
Nutella
Fruit Preserves (I used strawberry and triple berry)

Icing
Powdered sugar
Milk
Vanilla extract
Almond extract
Crazy sprinkles in as many shapes as possible

If that picture doesn't scream buttery heart cloggingly gonna be crazy flaky crust, then I don't know what does (and I don't know why I have this tightness in my chest).

Killer swirls in the nutella are key

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
2. Whisk the flour, sugar and salt together in a bowl then cut the butter in using a pastry cutter, two forks or just smash it with your fingers until you have pea-sized pieces.
3. Pour in the milk and egg and mix until just combined.
4. Divide the dough in two and roll out to about 1/8 inch thick.
5. Cut both pieces of dough into 6 equally sized rectangles. 
6. Brush one side (we'll use this as the bottom) with the egg wash then distribute your toppings as you want.
7. Realize that the dough is too thin to come apart without tearing and decide the only proper thing to do would be make a very traditional cake.
8. Place the top sheets on to cover one at a time and press down with a fork to seal and create individual pockets so the fillings don't mix.
9. Bake on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned.
10. Let cool.
11. Make the icing by mixing copious amounts of powdered sugar with very small amounts of milk, vanilla extract and almond extract until a mildly thick and not too runny icing forms.
12. Spread on the icing and cover with sprinkles.
13. Revel in the beauty of the pop tart cake that surely doesn't look like it was made by several 8 year olds.

It's amazing how loads of sugar can fix anything. 

Buttery deliciousness doesn't begin to describe the spectacular pastry shell we crafted. This could easily become a go-to pastry recipe for future desserts. Most importantly, though, the pastry proved to be quite unruly leading us to ditch the idea of individual pop tarts in favor of one crazy confection. It was a perfectly silly and fun way to bring a close to our baking adventures (and as with most things in my life, I have butter to thank).

The dinosaur sprinkles narrowly beat out the dolphins for my favorite. Moons and stars were the most disappointing.

For the icing, we used my standard diabetic glaze (previously seen in Snickerdoodles and Sugar Cookies). This solidified the pop tart cake as a breakfast food as the sugary richness can easily substitute for your morning coffee (to get you going for at least 30 minutes before crashing hardcore).

Just to be safe, you should pour even more sprinkles once you cut the cake. In fact, I'm developing a giant fork made of sprinkles specifically for eating the cake.

When making a pop tart cake, it's important to have options (I'm pretty sure my mom told me that along with some stuff about being sure to get at least 5 hours of TV in each day). We chose two berry fillings to go along with the golden child of Pinterest- Nutella (Ryan Gosling would have also been an acceptable answer). Upon initial devouring, the warm berry fillings proved to be supreme, but as this cake matured like a fine wine, the Nutella became the ideal. In the end, everything came together for a dessert we'll never forget.

This picture taken after making our first pie pretty much sums up all our baking adventures.

While it's sad to see a great baking partner and the only person who is a bigger pie enthusiast than I am go, I'm excited to see her start her new life as Dr. Robin, MD. This one final baking excursion encapsulated all the fun and randomness that filled our misadventures in the kitchen and served as a fitting send off. If you're in South Carolina, I highly recommend injuring yourself as she is one of the rare people I know who I would trust as my doctor.