Fairy Revel

My sister, my niece, and I (along with about 16 other people, high school graduates and their keepers) recently spent one day at the Happiest Place on Earth. Yep, I was a senior-trip chaperone (though I think we were really trying to get away with a family trip). My niece’s camera, which had most of our pictures on it, was unfortunately lost at about midnight, when we were all about to drop from exhaustion. I did take a few “scenic” type photos on my own camera.

See the whole set.

My niece’s birthday falls on Christmas, and since we’re both big Harry Potter geeks, this year I decided to make Butterbeer Cupcakes. Amy at amybites reverse-engineered the flavors from the Butterbeer served at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, an effort which is much appreciated. I’m not sure I’ve ever made cupcakes before, or if I did it was far enough in the distant past that I don’t remember. I was a bit nervous making these, because they’re filled with butterscotch ganache.

The recipe calls for imitation butter flavoring, and I decided not to use it for safety reasons, but I’m sure that with the flavoring the cupcakes would have tasted even more the way you’d imagine butterbeer tasting. It was a hard decision, and one I’m still not entirely happy with, so if somebody knows a way to imitate the fake butter flavor using something that doesn’t make you need a fake lung, I’d love to hear about it. The cake turned out a little drier than I would have liked, but the butterscotch ganache helped with that, and tasted lovely. The frosting reminded me why butterscotch is one of my favorite flavors, and I think I did pretty well with the piping, considering I’d never done it before and just used a plasic bag with no decorating tip.

I looked everywhere for butterscotch-flavored syrup for mixing with the vanilla cream soda, to make butterbeer for drinking later, but in the end my friends and I had to mix in some of the ganache. It worked pretty well, though the heavy cream sort of wanted to separate from the soda. It tasted great, though! I’ll definitely be hunting for a butterscotch syrup to use next time we want to geek out with cold beverages.

(Thanks to Jonathan for taking the above photo!)