Harry Potter Marathon Weekend: Robin and the Goblet of Butterbeer

This weekend, the dark forces of cold weather and laziness combined in a epic battle culminating in Robin and I deciding to spend our weekend watching all 8 Harry Potter Movies (that's about 20 hours of pure awesome). Unfortunately, we couldn't spend the weekend just watching movies; we also had to get our proper daily nutritional requirements of butter and sugar. As such, we decided we should make butterbeer (and we then decided we should go out and get rum, as it's what our potions professor would've wanted).

"Omg today's going to be so intense"- Robin describing our Sunday of The Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows I & II.

Butterbeer
Recipe adapted from The News Network Who Must Not Be Named
Servings: 4-6
Time: 1 hour (inactive for 50 minutes)

The secret is butter and sugar!

Butterbeer
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 tbsp water
6 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
Pure Vanilla extract (optional)
Rum (optional, but come on!)
2 bottles of cream soda

Whipped Topping
1 cup heavy whipping cream
4 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
Cinnamon

This is shockingly the light part

1. Begin a truly awesome weekend involving a Harry Potter marathon.
2. Decide to spice things up around movie 4.
3. Make the butterbeer. Start by combining the brown sugar and water in a saucepan at medium heat. Bring it to a gentle boil and cook, stirring often. If you want to be fancy, you can let it get to 240 F on a candy thermometer, or you can just stop it once it looks like magic has happened.
4. Stir in the butter, salt and heavy whipping cream. Remove from heat and let come down to room temp.
5. While waiting for the butter sugar to come down to room temp, make up the whipped topping. Combine the heavy whipping cream, dark brown sugar, vanilla extract and a sprinkle of cinnamon in a mixer and ramp it up to high speed until peaks start to form. Cover and refrigerate until ready.
6. Get really excited that it's finally time to mix everything together.
7. Put ~ 3 tbsp of the sugar butter in a glass. Top with a small amount of cream soda and mix well. 
8. Add 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract if desired and the necessary amount of rum to convince you that these aren't just very empty calories as they will be helping you feel more magical.
9. Add additional cream soda (about half a bottle total per butterbeer). 
10. Drop some whipped cream on the cool mystical foam layer and enjoy. I recommend letting it sit for a couple of minutes to further mix.
11. Watch many, many more hours of Harry Potter.

The Stages of Mixing Butterbeer:

Try to not be tempted by the butter sugar mixture and avoid stopping at the diabetes shot portion.

Get the butter sugar mixed in well with the cream soda. 

Add more cream soda (and booze) to balance things out. Stop when you have enough awesome foam.

Top with the whipped cream. Bonus points if it kind of looks like the sorting hat.

The butterbeer was everything we could have hoped for as it was exactly what we imagined it would taste like. This refreshing, sugary treat resides somewhere in the land of a float, but is made even more amazing by the presence of rum. The true highlight (aside from the obvious butter sugar) was the powerful presence of vanilla, which really helped the whipped topping stand out.

I found myself quickly downing my butterbeer as it was far too delicious to show silly muggle traits like restraint. The only problem is that it does fall a little on the heavy side meaning you have to stop after 2 or so. This really was the perfect way to spend a wintery (for Houston at least) weekend with the girl who introduced me to Harry Potter.

Additional Highlights of Harry Potterthon 2014:

Discovering that the internet is just as perverted and gross as I thought when attempting to find out who the actress who played Ginny got engaged to from the Potterverse.

Red wine staining my walls to fit perfectly with the darker tone of the final movies. Robin merely laughed after my recliner fell over and this happened. Oh, well, it's just a security deposit.

Robin and Terry's Definitive Ranking of Movies and Books

Books (best to worst)

Robin: 3, 4, 6, 7, 5, 2, 1

Terry: 4, 6, 3, 7, 5, 2, 1

Movies (best to worst)

Robin: Refuses to give a definitive ranking of the movies because "In our relationship I read more and you watch movies more"

Terry: 4, 3, 7B, 6, 5, 7A, 2, 1