Harry Potter Party: The Party Food

Let's face it: JK Rowling seems to like her sweets. She spends pages in every Harry Potter book going on about butterbeer, chocolate frogs, Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and the like. And the rest of the food, the pumpkin pasties, the shepherd's pie, the blancmange, isn't exactly kid-friendly fare. (Well, maybe my kids, who adore stinky cheese and sushi, but for the rest of the gang, pizza was going to be the best option.)

To be honest, I usually spend a bit more time on food when I'm planning a party, because I love to cook for my friends. But in this case, with the decorations, scheduling and favors taking up so much of our time, the food kind of took a back seat. Here's what we served:

Pre-dinner snacks
Chips: I chose some blue potato chips along with my tortillas, just to get the element of the odd in there, to serve with salsa and guacamole.

Veggie tray with ranch dip: This was meant to be served in the herbology lab, but somehow never made it up there.



Drinks
Butterbeer: We used cream soda, diet and regular, with cool butterbeer labels someone designed online, and optional butterscotch syrup on the side).

Gillywater: Clearly marked for grownups only, this was an easy white wine sangria that's a go-to summer cocktail for us.

Bubble Juice: Also known as lemonade.

We also had water and plain old beer for grownups (didn't have a chance to doctor those labels). And there was the nifty potion we had our classes make—more on that later.

Dinner
We made this easy-peasy and reasonably cheap. Our favorite grocery delivery service, Fresh Direct, has pretty tasty frozen pizzas. We bought a few cheese, a few pepperoni, and a few more with barbecued chicken and artichokes. While we took the kids out to run around on broomsticks, my husband was pizza chef and did an admirable job getting them cooked and served on time.




Dessert
Cake and ice cream, of course. I built a Hogwarts cake with a couple of square cakes cut in half and stacked, and a few cupcakes and ice cream cones for the towers. Extra cupcakes were simply frosted and decked out with Harry's signature lightning scar, done up in glitter frosting. And I bought the cool fondant Harry, Hermione and Ron from Crafty Rosy on Etsy. (The cake was a bit more impressive BEFORE the kids all demolished it!)



Movie Snacks
During the movie, we served up "magic wands," chocolate licorice dipped in white chocolate. Those were a big hit!

Next up: The party gets started!