Sausage Rolls

Our next new food item appears in the Gryffindor common room, following Harry's first attempt at opening his golden egg for the Tri-Wizard Tournament:

"'It was someone being tourtured!' said Neville, who had gone very white and spilled sausage rolls on the floor. 'You're going to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!'" 

(Goblet of Fire 366).

Since these sausage rolls were nicked from the Hogwarts kitchens, our recreation better be as delicious as possible to compete with the House Elves' cooking! Luckily, I have a very simple plan.

You Will Need:

1 roll of Pilsbury (or similar) crescent rolls

1 box Morningstar Farms sausage links, preferably not completely frozen

1. Unroll your crescent dough and separate the individual sections.

2. Depending on how bread-y you'd like your sausage rolls to be, cut each section in two or three smaller equal triangles.

3. Starting at the longest side of the triangles, roll each sausage link in a triangle of dough and place on a cookie sheet.

4. Bake according to the directions on the crescent package.

These are so simple and SO tasty! Be careful, or you'll have eaten a whole tube of crescents without even noticing (not that that happened to any particular blogger or anything...)! A delightful option for breakfast or a protein-filled snack. Enjoy!

Butterbeer

Today's food item is the first occurrence of butterbeer in The Goblet of Fire, and it comes during one of Harry's many attempts at trying to avoid the vicious pen of Rita Skeeter:

"'She's gone,' said Hermione, looking right through Harry toward the end of the street. 'Why don't we go and have a butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, it's a bit cold, isn't it?'" (Goblet of Fire 319).

If I remember correctly, we've done two butterbeer recipes already, but today's comes from homecooking.com. 

To Make 4-6 servings, You Will Need:

1 pint vanilla ice cream

1/4 cup butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp butterscotch extract (I couldn't find this, so I used butterscotch syrup)

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1 qt apple cider

apple slices for garnish, optional

1. On medium speed, beat together the vanilla ice cream, butter, butterscotch extract, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg until well combined. Place in an air-tight container and re-freeze.

2. Gently heat the apple cider on the stove until steaming hot.

3. Place 1 scoop of the ice cream in a mug and top with hot cider. Garnish with an apple slice if desired. 

Alas, this is not my favorite butterbeer recipe. It really isn't very tasty when it's no longer hot. And I definitely recommend using melted butter instead of just room-temperature butter and just re-freezing the ice cream for longer (unless of course, you'd like butter chips in your ice cream; I spent a lot of time spitting out butter bits). It tastes fine for a few sips/bites, but I'd suggest trying one of the other butterbeer recipes out there. Cheers!