I did not like seeing ingredients such as Jell-O listed when the recipe includes directions for homemade custard.

Grease an 8x8 inch square pan and set aside. Combine the sugars, butter, heavy cream treacle and cream of tartar in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium high heat, stirring constantly, until the butter is melted and the ingredients are combined. Was down the sides of the pot with a pastry brush dipped in hot water if sugar crystals form on the sides, to prevent recrystallization. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pot and continue to cook without stirring until the mixture reaches 240 degrees on the candy thermometer. Chapter Six: Breakfast Before Class includes some of Harry's favorite breakfasts like fried sausage patties, porridge with cream and treacle, the classic English fry up, traditional English marmalade, lots of fried foods and the odd one out-cinnamon pull-apart breakfast rolls. That last one sounds good and is topped with cream cheese icing. This section is very classically British and what I would expect to be served at Hogwarts. But then I began going through the cookbook, and I would definitely hesitate before giving it to anyone younger than 13 or 14. Frying, hot ovens, lots of dicing — none of these are activities I would allow a preteen to even think about doing! My daughter ended up in the Emergency Room one night from a knife cut on her palm — and she was 14! I don’t know who was sobbing more: her or me.

Games

The author imagines Petunia's pudding from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a strawberry trifle. The only official companion to the Harry Potter stories - the ultimate compendium of wizarding lists, charts, maps and all things magical! Al principio de cada capítulo se introduce un poco la temática de las recetas que se van a ver en dicho capítulo, por supuesto, siempre a través de referencias a los libros de Harry Potter. Ni que decir tiene que amo el mundo de Harry Potter y todo lo relacionado con él. De pequeña seguí las publicaciones de los libros y vi todas las películas en su estreno, así que cuando descubrí este libro lo primero que pensé es que necesitaba tenerlo en mis manos. Y dicho esto, ¡aquí tenéis mi opinión! It starts with a nice introduction and has some helpful hints. I did like the way it was divided, which was by location. That way you could look specifically for food from Hogwarts or at the Weasleys'. The steps are numbered, and the recipes are peppered with hints and fun historical facts, as well as guides for making substitutions, which I appreciated. I also liked that each recipe came with a paragraph explaining which book and chapter the recipe was from, along with some context.

All in all, I'd recommend this for really, really new cooks and maybe kids. But as an adult, I don't really need recipes for a lot of these things. I'll hang on to it purely for the Harry Potter theme, but probably won't use it much. There is no right age. Harry Potter is a series that is loved by adults and children. The sooner you start reading it, the sooner you can become a Potterhead. And then there was the Old-Fashioned Chocolate Buttermilk Sheet Cake Disaster. I was surprised at how liquid-y the batter was, and even more surprised that it only called for a 9x13 pan. Thinking that this cake probably wouldn't rise so much, I went ahead and used all the batter in one pan. Disaster. Complete, utter, total disaster. I followed the recipe to a tee and what happened? The batter bubbled up all over my oven, and continued to bubble and spill everywhere even after I removed it from the oven. All those ingredients, wasted. Smoke everywhere. Did the author even test this recipe? This should have been for two pans, or perhaps four round pans. DO NOT try to bake this in only one 9x13 pan, unless you want to waste the rest of the batter.

No photos. No photos at all. I know that makes cookbooks cost more (and not all cookbooks have them) but for not particularly gifted cooks like myself, well. We kind of need the photos.

This book seems to be targeted at children (there are several references to 'your friends' and 'your parents') but apart from the Bacon and Eggs most recepies look bloody complicated. There are a lot of pasties (I have made pasties several times and still don't get the dough right...) and instructions like 'Let cook for and hour but be careful, don't let it get to hot as it might explode'. Probably not the ideal choice for 13 year old HP-fans. Now I'm not saying it shouldn't have these recipes but some kind of rating system from 'Children can make this on their own with some supervision from adults' to 'children can watch adults from a safe distance while they try not to blow the kitchen up while cooking' would have been a good idea. There are also cake recipes to imagine what types of cakes Harry's friends would send for his birthday while the Dursleys were on a diet. None of these cakes is traditionally British. Not particularly easy looking recipes. Again ... kind of depends on what you're looking for in a cookbook. Willing to put forth a little effort? This might be just the thing for you. Most of it was a little complicated for my tastes, much as I think it would be grand to plan an HP party. While the blurbs paraphrasing episodes from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series have generally been entertaining enough (although also often much too repetitive in scope and feel, and to such an extent that I actually ended up skimming quite a large chunk of the second part of The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook as far too many of the presented examples of Harry and his friends enjoying different types of foods actually just ended up feeling as though one was reading the same types of scenarios over and over again), I cannot really say that I have at ALL appreciated the manner in which author Dinah Bucholz has approached her 150 odd recipes. For since all of the recipes featured in The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook are of course and naturally United Kingdom based and that a goodly number of them also do appear as being potentially rather difficult and complicated to make, with intricate instructions as well as sometimes necessitating ingredients with which many American and/or Canadian cooks might be not that familiar, I for one would have assumed that Dinah Bucholz to also the include at least a SOME pictures, some accompanying photos of what the end products would and should look like (and that there are NO accompanying visuals whatsoever featured and presented in The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, this really does make me quite massively and personally livid).To be fair ... I did actually read/skim over this cookbook WANTING to love it. And I still love the idea of it. But I didn't actually try cooking any of the recipes. But, as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so is the proof of a cookbook in how many recipes the reader can use. I copied down more than 40 recipes — which is great as far as I’m concerned. I also really didn't appreciate that some of these recipes haven't even been tested by the author: and she admits it in the text. If you didn't want to make it, why the hell would I want to? In a similar vein, some of these recipes were kind of lazy. Bacon and eggs is two separate recipes in this book; one for bacon, and one for eggs.... Really? Also, one of the recipes point blank says that candied orange peel is impossible to find, so she just omitted it and used marmalade. First, this is a cookbook- make them yourself. Second, why would you admit that? Just don't put that note in at all, and no one would think twice about it. Since reading this book, I've kindled a huge passion for cooking and baking. I've found excuses to try recipes out on anyone and everyone I know.