Earlier in the week, a friend emailed me a link to a recipe for real, Tudor-style butterbeer. Apparently butterbeer is not just the stuff of Harry Potter culinary lore, but a real drink imbibed by real people with a real recipe to boot.
This brought to mind my high school days, when I would make faux butterbeer for my friends using homemade hot buttered rum mix and root beer. I would warm up the root beer on the stove and whisk in the hot buttered rum mix, and serve to friends dressed in festive hats and robes. We always saw Harry Potter on opening night, and we always dressed in costume (we did the same thing for Lord of the Rings). We were were (and sometimes still are) those kids!
When I discovered the root beer/hot buttered rum mix drink I was ecstatic, because it brought an additional air of authenticity to our festivities. When my friend emailed me the REAL butterbeer recipe, the memories came back and that, coupled with the fact that the newest Harry Potter movie has recently been released, inspired me to devote this blog entirely to butterbeer.
And so begins DinnerLove’s two-week Butterbeer extravaganza! This week I am bringing you the non-alcoholic root beer variety, and next week I’ll feature the tudor-style alcoholic recipe. Woohoo!
Butterbeer
Root beer, at least 16 oz
Hot buttered rum mix:
1/2 stick of butter
1 C brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
Leave the 1/2 stick of butter on the counter for a bit to soften it up. Alternatively, you can soften it in the microwave but I always manage to screw that up somehow and end up with a big liquid mess.
So, all you do is cream your ingredients together. Put the butter, sugar and spices into a bowl and stir until they are all combined.
Use 1 TB mix per 8 oz of root beer. I’m only making enough for one person (this stuff is really sweet!) so I heated 8 oz of root beer. When the root beer is warm and bubbly, add the buttered rum mix.
Whisk the mix into the root beer until it is dissolved. Watch the root beer, it will foam up if you’re not careful!
Pour into a big mug and enjoy!
In my opinion, the non-alcoholic variety is probably more true to the Harry Potter books than the tudor-style alcoholic beer recipe. I know that the drinking age in the UK is 18, but Harry Potter and Co have been drinking butterbeer since they were at least 12 and I seriously doubt that Madame Rosemerta would stand for a gaggle of drunk pre-teens in The Three Broomsticks, especially when they have Voldemort to fight off. Could you imagine? Harry wasn’t exactly an A student when it came to magic. If he were drunk he would have been dead!
Until next week, my fellow muggles. Enjoy!
❤ Stef
Dinner Love. 