My oldest is 7 now (insert heavy sigh here) and this last year I bought him the full-set of Harry Potter books. He loves them, and we were slowly working through Sorcerer’s Stone. He’s a fantastic reader, but still only in 1st grade, so we do a lot of looking up words in the dictionary or thesaurus.

We finished up the first book finally so this last weekend as a treat, I decided to do a Harry Potter day! I love doing activities with their movies and books when I can, tying everything together. Please don’t get me wrong, I have days were I turn on the Sesame Street and veg out. I’m sure on those days my kids learn something fantastic (thanks PBS!) but it certainly isn’t coming from me. Luckily for me, HP has so many fantastic little ideas for us to try, so I have actually decided to break it up into a few parts!

This is where I would usually reminisce about the lesson Jack learned from this, or how I grew as a parent after somehow managing to briefly make our lives a chaotic mess. None of that really happened this time, and I would be stretching the truth if I said we did. Our lives have been very hectic as of late; the Big Guy is working 7 days a week about a 100 miles from home, and I put in some days at the office which means Grandma-daycare, short parental tempers, and hastily thrown together dinners. Our special Harry Potter day was my peace treaty to my boys. They loved the movie! Jack liked the spells especially and Henry seemed to like Hagrid, both really liked the Quidditch game.

I found many recipes online for Butterbeer, the most popular of which was the recipe from Hogwarts in Orlando. There they serve chilled and frozen butterbeers. But when I read the books, I always pictured it as being warm, like a creamy, rich, hot buttered rum. Now obviously I’m not going to feed my children rum. So I decided to branch off a bit on my own. I recently experimented with making butterscotch syrup at home, and the results were quite tasty (but not perfect yet, hence no post about it). I used my butterscotch prototype, but any store bought kind would work just as well. I mixed several tablespoons of the butterscotch in the saucepan with half-and-half and a dash of cinnamon, and put the heat to medium-low. While my butterscotch mix warmed, I beat a half-cup of cream in my kitchenaid, then added a pinch of sugar and vanilla for taste. After a few short minutes of stirring and warming up, my half-butterscotch mix was warm and start to steam, and all the butterscotch had melted into the creamy half-and-half.

I poured half the warm mix into a ball mason jar mug, and topped with room-temperature cream soda. This mixture will foam like crazy, hence the beer title, so pour carefully! I topped my butterbeer with the whipped cream, and grated some butterscotch chips on top just for looks. Jack loved helping me mix their ‘beer’, and drank it to the last drop. We found after the first few sips that is was actually extremely tasty when you mixed the whipped cream in with the soda portion. I think next time we will mix the butterscotch cream mix and whipped cream together before adding just a bit of soda to top it off and create the foam head.

Create and use for you own Potter Movie-thon!

Butterbeer

makes 2 pint glasses

1 cup Half-and-half

6 tablespoons Butterscotch syrup

1 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 cup Heavy whipping cream, whipped

1 can (or 1 cup) cream soda, room temperature

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Beat heavy cream until peaks form, add in vanilla and sugar, mix until stiff peaks form, set aside. In a shallow saucepan heat Half-and-half, butterscotch syrup and cinnamon, stirring occasionally until mix is warmed and butterscotch is incorporated. Pour mix into glasses, top with room temperature cream soda and whip cream. Garnish with finely grated butterscotch chips if desired.

For a creamier drink, mix whipped cream with warm butterscotch before adding cream soda.