Posts Tagged ‘ice cream’

Fun Food Saturday: Butterbeer

Saturday, November 27th, 2010

If you have a Harry Potter fan in your house (and, let’s face it, even if you don’t), you probably know that there’s a new movie out and Harry Potter fever has been at an all-time high. Lots of young fans we know would love to fly on a broomstick or do a few sneaky spells, but even if you can’t be Harry Potter, you can eat like him. Of all of the foods mentioned in the Harry Potter books, one of the most intriguing and delicious-sounding is butterbeer.

The books never give an recipe for butterbeer and the exact concoction is left to our imagination. But that’s not to say folks haven’t tried to replicate it. (Note: Although the books hint that butterbeer may be alcoholic, almost all of the recipes we’ve seen are nonalcoholic, with a kid audience in mind.) At the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando, for example, the butterbeer is one of the fastest-selling foods at the park. This top-secret recipe (which was reportedly approved by J.K.Rowling herself) is a tasty concoction that’s kind of like of a cream soda but with a little more butter and salt to cut the sugar. You can either order it cold or frozen, which is similar to a root beer float (and yes, we were there over Thanksgiving, hence the sudden interest in butterbeer).

Looking for inspiration once we got home, one of the first recipes we found for butterbeer is from the Harry Potter site known as MuggleNet, which envisions butterbeer as a warm soda with butterscotch topping and butter. However, most recipes (like the Orlando theme park) are for cold butterbeer creations. Babble’s Family Kitchen has a good recipe that looks relatively easy (you need to be willing to make your own butterscotch sauce, but you can do that ahead of time) and there are some nice step-by-step pictures to help you along the way.

We also like the approach by Darla at over at Bakingdom, who found that most of the recipes out there were either far too involved for a drink or were just glorified cream soda. She finds a nice middle ground with a whipped-cream-style concoction.

And if you’re looking for the clearest possible rundown, we like this list from Associated Content for the Top 10 Butterbeer Recipes. The recipes range from simple to complex, with a variety of different bases (cream soda, apple cider, or even ice cream). It may be too late in the season to serve frosty butterbeer floats, but a warm version could make a nice party drink for the holiday season. If that’s the case, you heard it here first: Butterbeer is the new mulled apple cider.

Fun food Saturday: Because food should be fun.

Posted Under: Just For Fun, Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
This post was written by jollytomato on November 27th, 2010

Friday Food News Feed: Nov. 19

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Let’s start this week with a call to action. Will the lame-duck Congress finally move on the Child Nutrition Act? Maybe, if you tell them so. Follow this link from Time for Lunch (a project of Slow Food USA) to contact your representatives. The Child Nutrition Act is a federal law that comes up for reauthorization in Congress every five years. It governs the school meal programs, which feed more than 31 million children every school day. You can read more about the latest efforts to pass the bill at The Atlantic.

Speaking of school lunch, we could use a few more efforts toward better nutrition. The Lunch Tray did a little experiment in her child’s school and found more than twice the recommended daily intake of sodium in school breakfast and lunch. The Child Nutrition Act, if passed, would likely address sodium content in school foods.

And speaking of more unhealthy foods, the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has a new report on Fast Food FACTS (Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score). Among the findings:

  • The fast food industry spent more than $4.2 billion dollars in 2009 on TV advertising and other media.
  • The average preschooler (2-5 years) saw 2.8 TV ads per day for fast food; children (6-11 years) saw 3.5; and teens (12-17 years) saw 4.7.
  • Young people’s exposure to fast food TV ads has increased. Compared to 2003, preschoolers viewed 21% more fast food ads in 2009, children viewed 34% more, and teens viewed 39% more.

    • As Kelly Brownell observes at Eating Well, “Most important is for companies to remove children and teens from the list of groups to be recruited as loyal customers. It seems unlikely that industry will do so voluntarily—there is simply too much money at stake.” The whole report is definitely worth a read.

    OK, let’s move on to some more uplifting articles and ideas. First check out this story from Psychology Today (via @eatdinner) on keeping family dinner interesting.  MyOptumHealth has a nice list of seven healthy foods and how to make them healthier. And E2Dietitian has some thoughts on the benefits of going grocery shopping with your kids.

    Last but not least, this is the last Friday before the big Thanksgiving holiday. We love this little guide from Meals Matter for how kids can help in the kitchen, with special tasks for every age group. We also have some cute recipes: From Disney’s Family Fun, you can make these Teeny Turkey sandwiches to tide the kids over before the big meal (or better yet, have the kids make them). And if you’re willing to think outside the box, try these Pumpkin Pie Popsicles from Kitchen Corners (via TasteSpotting); or this Pumpkin Ice Cream Pizza Pie from Knuckle Salad. Mmmm…pumpkin…

    Happy Friday to all!

    Posted Under: Childhood Obesity, Government Regulations, Just For Fun, Nutrition | Tags: , , , , , , ,
    This post was written by jollytomato on November 19th, 2010

    Fun Food Saturday: Silly Tacos

    Saturday, October 16th, 2010

    Have you heard all of the buzz about spaghetti tacos? Yeah, so did we. Honestly, we didn’t think that much about it at first but we’ve been slowly discovering that the New York Times is on to something – it’s a huge deal in the pre-tween food world. After we made a note of it in a story last week, Chef Joe, our culinary sounding board and the arbiter of all that is cool and delicious, mentioned that he made it for his kids and they ate every bite. Now Chef Joe is making them? Maybe we’ve been missing something.

    So we grudgingly went out and bought taco shells (Mexican food snob note: we have one of the best tortilla bakeries in the country right near our house and we never buy taco shells – we weren’t even sure where to find them at the store) with the thought that we could try them, but we’d have to ramp it up a little bit with something more original. The result? From the top: spaghetti tacos, mashed potato tacos, broccoli tacos (taccoli), and macaroni and cheese tacos.

    The first one our littlest went for (before the photo shoot was even over) was the macaroni and cheese taco, and apparently that was good enough to eat standing up. The spaghetti taco was good enough, and the taccoli was decent, but the real surprise was the mashed potato taco. Something about the combination of the crunchy shell and the creamy interior was just perfect. If we had tossed a few cooked vegetables in there it would have tasted like a potato samosa.

    After dinner we had a few taco shells left over so we filled them each with a scoop of ice cream. Apparently that went over pretty well too, because none of the dessert plates had so much as a crumb left on them. Our six-year-old came up with an idea to bake a batch of chocolate cookies and then stick them in a taco shell just when they come out of the oven and are still soft. Next time, kid, next time…

    Fun Food Saturday: Because food should be fun.

    Posted Under: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , ,
    This post was written by jollytomato on October 16th, 2010
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