Soprano in the Real World: Potter Party!

The weather here has been just bizzare... right now it is 97 degrees and the humidity level is literally worse than the Amazon (my dad saw it on the news). Just so you know I'm not kidding... yesterday I noticed that the roads were wet, not because it had rained, but because the moisture in the air was condensing onto the ground. I whipped out my camera to get a picture...and the lens promptly fogged up before I could even get a shot:

It is gross. And we lost power last night around 8:30 while I was at yoga - our neighbor called Centerpoint, and was informed that it probably wouldn't be on again until midnight, so instead of spending the night sweating buckets in our place with no fan or AC, we drove 10 minutes to Ben's parents' house and slept in their air-conditioned guest room.

But that isn't really what we're here to talk about - let's chat about Harry Potter! As I've already mentioned, Ben and I are pretty obsessed with Harry Potter. Back in early May I had the genius idea that when the 8th and final movie came out, we should have an all-day marathon of the first seven films and then go see a late showing of Deathly Hallows Part II. "Great idea," said Ben. "How long would that take exactly?" I did the math and realized that in order to make a 10:30 show, we would have to start the first movie at around 5am. So instead, we decided to limit viewing to our favorite scenes, and start the first movie around 11am. Much more realistic.

Our friend Jay came over around 9am to help Ben make batches of Butterbeer and Pumpkin Juice. They both have bartending degrees so they had a great time "brewing potions" in the kitchen... meanwhile I was making a mess whipping icing for the Cauldron Cakes.

Having no clue what a Cauldron Cake looked like, I ended up basically making cupcakes, hollowing out part of the middle and filling them with icing. To make the handles, I unrolled some Haribo Licorice Pinwheels, cut them into strips, and stuck them into the edges of the icing.

Signage made from our leftover wedding invitation envelopes - so resourceful!

The rose icing was the same recipe as I used for Cake in a Jar only I doubled the recipe - I don't know what I did differently this time (probably added more milke) but this batch turned out even better! Fluffy and almost meringue-like. The "polyjuice potion" icing was Deb's PB-Cream Cheese icing which is one of my favorite things on the planet

^^ Picture of the finished Butterbeer and Pumpkin Juice
- I did not take this photo and cannot be held responsible for its blurriness.

I also made savory Pumpkin Pasties - empenada dough filled with butternut squash, goat cheese, rosemary and caramelized onions. For the dough I threw 3 cups of flour, a pinch of salt, 1 egg, 3T water and 1T apple cider vinegar in the food processor, chilled the dough in plastic wrap for about 45 minutes before rolling it out and filling the pasties.

They were yum.

And we had tons of fun watching the movies! At first we were reluctant to skip scenes, but by the end we were being pretty ruthless so that we could get to the end of the 7th film and still make our showtime.

And yes, I am wearing a Gryffindor scarf. In July. Don't judge.