The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook - Dinah Bucholz [3]
To grease and flour a pan, you can use a flour-and-oil baking spray. It's much faster and yields better results than the old-fashioned method of buttering the pan and dusting the flour over it, then shaking out the excess flour. Make sure you also line your cake pans with parchment paper so that the layers come out in one piece.
It's important to measure ingredients precisely. You will need one liquid measuring cup and a set of dry measuring cups as well as a set of measuring spoons. To measure flour or sugar, dip the measuring cup into the container and level it with a straight edge, such as the flat side of a knife. Do not pack down the flour or shake the cup to even the top. To measure packed brown sugar, use your fingers, your fist, your knuckles, or a spoon to pack down the sugar as you fill the cup.
If you do not own a food processor, you can make pie or tart dough by hand. Rub the fat into the flour using your fingertips or cut it into the flour using two forks until the mixture resembles coarse yellow meal. Make sure to incorporate all the white powdery bits. Proceed as directed in the recipe.
Pie dough is easy to make once you master the technique. Make sure you use very cold ingredients and be careful to work the dough as little as possible. Mixing too much makes the crust hard to roll out (it will keep springing back) and yields a tough texture. When adding water, it's better to add too much than too little. You can always add extra flour when rolling out the dough to prevent sticking, but a dry dough will keep cracking and tearing when you roll it out, and you won't be able to save it.
Many recipes call for toasting nuts. To do this properly, spread the nuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast in a 350°F oven for 7 to 10 minutes until brown and fragrant.
Some recipes specify treacle or golden syrup. These sweeteners are produced during the sugar refining process and are similar to molasses. You can find treacle or golden syrup in a well-stocked supermarket or specialty food store, but if you can't find them, use the following substitutions: For black treacle, use dark molasses or blackstrap molasses. For golden syrup, use light or dark corn syrup, light molasses, or pure maple syrup. Maple syrup will impart a unique flavor to the finished product, so use it with discretion.
Turbinado sugar, also called demerara sugar, is raw cane sugar, which looks like large, pale brown, translucent crystals, and is great for sprinkling on cookies or muffins because it looks pretty and is a lot crunchier than granulated sugar. It's easy to find in the baking aisle of your super-market. A common supermarket brand is Sugar in the Raw.
If you use glass pans such as Pyrex or dark metal pans to bake cakes, subtract 25 degrees from the temperature specified in the recipe, as these pans get hotter and retain heat for longer. Baking at the higher temperature will cause the cakes to overbake.
The food processor used for testing the recipes in this book was an old model. The number of pulses specified is simply a guideline; use the visual cues provided in the recipe to know when to stop pulsing. This is especially important in pie and tart doughs, as overprocessing can yield a tough rather than tender crust.
Chapter One
Good Food with Bad Relatives
The Dursleys might thank you to remember that they are as normal as can be, but their treatment of their own flesh-and-blood nephew Harry Potter is anything but. Determined to stamp out any vestiges of magic he might have inherited from his wizard parents, they keep him as downtrodden as possible. But they can't force him to avoid his destiny. On the stroke of midnight of his eleventh birthday, after years of fantasizing about a kind relative coming to claim him, Harry is visited by a half-giant called Hagrid, who tells him the truth about his heritage. Despite