Happy birthday, Harry!

July 31st is Harry Potter's birthday, and friends of ours invited us over to celebrate it with a themed dinner party. I may have had a little too much fun making things for it. I made Harry's favorite dessert --a treacle tart-- and put together a variety of HP themed candies: Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Sherbet Lemons (not a wizard candy, but Dumbledore's favorite), Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans (and I do mean every flavor, including boogers, vomit, pencil shavings, lawn clippings, moldy cheese, and toothpaste), Professor Slughorn's favorite crystallised pineapple, chocolate frogs (complete with famous wizard cards!), and liquorice wands. To balance out the sugar, we also brought some cheese and crackers--all British and Irish cheeses to keep with the theme. Mandy had made curry chicken pot pies, fabulous pumpkin pasties, and butterbeer. It was so ridiculously fun.

 
 

butterbeer!

treacle tart -- the crust was too hard but the filling tasted exactly like the one I had in England 2 years ago. The trick is finding Lyle's Golden Syrup, which I was able to get at World Market.