2016 - A Gourmet year

Firstly, we're wishing our readers a very Happy New Year. We hope you've enjoyed our Harry Potter themed "Wizarding December" recipes ! 

We'll get back on our usual recipes and scheduling from now on ;-) 

It's the first anniversary of our blog. Exactly 1 year ago, day for day, we posted our very first recipe : the Galette des Rois, which, by the way, is traditionally enjoyed during January, for the Epiphany. So you're right on time to give it a go this year !

To celebrate our very first year of existence, we made a small recap of the top 5 of our most viewed recipes from last year ! We hope it should reflect your five favorite recipes and hopefully inspire you to try some !

Is your favourite not in the list ? Let us know in the comments !

Click on the pictures to access the recipes 

- 5 -

Also called "Pain d'épice", this sweet loaf works with sweet and savory spreads. It's also one of the first recipes we posted on this blog , therefore we're surprised and happy to see it top 5 !

- 4 -

Little sweet shortcrust tartlets, filled with an indulging milk chocolate custard, and topped with fresh raspberries. No wonder why this delicious tea time treat made it to number 4 !

Butterbeer [Wizarding December]

It's so close to Christmas now, and we're at the end of our Wizarding December ! We would like to wish our readers all the best for Christmas, and we hope you've enjoyed the Harry Potter themed posts. 

To finish, we are going to make Butterbeer, the popular beverage served in Hogsmeade village, and enjoyed by thousands of wizards around the world. The main question is : What does Butterbeer really taste like ? J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, described it as being a little bit like less-sickly butterscotch. From the book, it does seems like Butterbeer has a very low alcoholic content, not enough to affect humans, but enough to get house-elves drunk. 

However, for this Butterbeer, we are actually going to adapt an original recipe from "The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin", an old English cooking book published in 1588, including the first recorded recipe for "Buttered Beer" - a Tudor Era drink. Here is the original recipe as transcribed from the book : 

To make Buttered Beere
Take three pintes of Beere, put fiue yolkes of Egges to it, straine them together, and set it in a pewter pot to the fyre, and put to it halfe a pound of Sugar, one penniworth of Nutmegs beaten, one penniworth of Cloues beaten, and a halfepenniworth of Ginger beaten, and when it is all in, take another pewter pot and brewe them together, and set it to the fire againe, and when it is readie to boyle, take it from the fire, and put a dish of sweet butter into it, and brewe them together out of one pot into an other.

The result of this drink will not taste anything like butterscotch, therefore, probably not anywhere close to the butterbeer that Harry Potter and his friends enjoyed in the books. It actually tastes like a sweet, warm, spiced beer ! We adjusted the spices slightly until it reached our personal liking, and used a bit less cloves and nutmeg than the original recipe asked for ( We used 1/4 teaspoon instead of 1/2 a teaspoon ). About the Ale, we got our hands on a bottle of Old Speckled Hen, and we thought it worked out nicely. You can of course make it work with any other good Ale you can get yours hand on, but the taste may differ slightly.

Find the other Wizarding December recipes here !

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5 minutes

15-20 minutes

3 pints (475 ml/pint)

Sugar Quills [Wizarding December]

Today we're making Sugar Quills ! First mentioned in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, this popular treat is very appreciated by little wizards because it allow them to secretly enjoy a sweet candy in class, while they pretend to think about what to write next.

For this recipe, we are simply going to make lollipops, and if you wish to give them the shape of a quill, you'll need to invest in a mold. We found ours on Etsy (we'll give the links below) and to be fair, we took one that was way too small for what we wanted to do. Regardless, we still made them, they're simply mini-treats rather than large realistic quill. 

Here is the link to the mold we used in this recipe : our mold, but you may want to consider this one and this one too. We simply did not came across them before we ordered our first one :( 

Unless you order several molds, you will have to do the quills one by one. The ingredients below allowed us to make approximately 8 of our little quills, but we divided the measures by 4 to do it in 4 times. Let us explain : with sugar work, temperature is key, if you don't heat it up enough, you'll end up with some stretchy caramel, too much, and the sugar will crystallize and be unusable. If you do them all at once, your sugar mix will begin to set while waiting for each quill to harden. Which means that you'll have to re-heat the sugar and risk crystallization of the whole thing. We noticed that, with the sugar mix, it was only possible to do 2 quills before the sugar mix begins to crystallize. So we advise you guys to divide the measures by 4, for 2 quills per batch. This method also allows you to get creative with flavouring and colouring by changing it each time.

In this recipe we use powdered glucose, which helps to prevent the crystallization of the sugar syrup ( it still does when overheated but allows us to make 2 quills at a time ). It's not the easiest thing to find in store, so if you're in Ireland, we found ours in Dunnes Stores.  

This is a very generic recipe for lollipops and any other hard candies, so if you don't have a feather mold, don't worry, you can use any mold safe for sugar work you have at home! 

Disclaimer:

The Arrogant Pug is not affiliated, endorsed or sponsored by The Harry Potter franchise. Product names, logos, brands and other trademarks are the property of their respective trademark holders. All the files offered for download is for private use only and cannot be sold.

Find the other Wizarding December recipes here !

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10 minutes

15-20 minutes + until set

8 lollipops approximately