Harry Potter Party!

Last Wednesday, I held a Harry Potter themed party for my friends, a sort of pre-New Years celebration. A tad random, but what better way is there to start the New Year than by eating lots of Harry Potter food with friends?

So... I'm crazy about themes. I'm someone who gets excited by holidays, seasonal changes, and anything else associated with a theme. Around Thanksgiving, I came up with the idea of having a Harry Potter party, inspired by 1) the Harry Potter party in the movie "Yes Man" (youtube clip at the bottom of this post, if you're curious) and 2) reading about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park within a theme park that's set to open Spring 2010 in Universal Orlando (which I'm very very excited about).

With ideas of drinking butterbeer and eating pumpkin pasties in real life floating around in my brain, I decided that it was very necessary that I throw this Harry Potter party. So in my next few posts, I'll be sharing with you Harry Potter themed recipes from my party, from a Sorting Hat shaped bread to Golden Snitch cake pops. Today, I'll share with you the simplest but most easily recognized recipe of the bunch: Butterbeer.

Harry Potter Butterbeer

4 cups creme soda
4 cups ginger ale
1 cup butterscotch syrup (or more)
ice

Pour the creme soda and ginger ale in a large bowl or pitcher and mix. Throughly mix in the butterscotch syrup so it doesn't all sink to the bottom. Try a bit, and add more butterscotch syrup if not to taste. Once the butterscotch quantity is sufficient, add ice and serve.
Serves 8.

Pre-Made Dishes

I want to mention that many of the dishes I served weren't actually made from scratch, which made hosting the party much easier for me to handle.

Gillyweed Salad: Two seaweed salads I picked up at a Korean supermarket. They're pictured above, the platter under the mincemeat pie picture. I know the green seaweed salad (the one on the right) is also sold at Japanese supermarkets, labeled "wakame salad".

Mincemeat Pies: I ran out of time to make my own mincemeat pies, so I picked up a package of these Walker's brand pies at Cost Plus World Market.

Every Flavor Beans: Much to the relief of my friends, these weren't actually the Bertha Bott's Every Flavor Beans, but just a regular pack of 50 flavor jellybeans. I did try looking for the actual Every Flavor Beans but I couldn't find them anywhere...

Gummy Frogs: I sadly also didn't have time to make chocolate frogs, so instead I purchased a bag of gummy frogs that I also found at Cost Plus World Market.

Licorice Wands: Pretty straight forward. I wasn't too sure what licorice wands look like, so I just got a pack of Red Vines and deemed them "licorice wands".

"Roast" Chicken: This dish was half homemade and half pre-made. The reason for the quotation marks is that this chicken was actually a rotisserie chicken bought from Costco, not a roasted chicken. But I surrounded the chicken with a variety of veggies that my mom quickly sauteed for me right before the party started.

Hot Cocoa: Since I wanted to provide a hot drink in contrast to the ice cold butterbeer, I asked my friends to pick up some instant hot chocolate mix on the way to the party. So on the table, I placed the packets of cocoa next to a teapot of hot water and nifty broomstick stirrers that I made out of trimmed bamboo skewers and raffia.