The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook - Dinah Bucholz [47]
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Remove one baking sheet from the refrigerator and line each case with small pieces of aluminum foil. Fill the foil with beans or pie weights. Bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375°F and bake another 20 minutes until the dough is set. Remove the foil and weights and bake another 3 to 5 minutes until light golden brown. Raise the heat to 400°F and repeat with the second sheet. Cool completely on a wire rack before filling.
To make the Sweet Cream — Blueberry Filling, beat the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy, about 4 minutes. In a separate bowl, beat the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Fold the two mixtures together until smooth. Divide the mixture among the twelve vol-au-vents. Top with as many blueberries as fit. Melt the jelly in the microwave for about 20 seconds and brush the tops of the blueberries with the melted jelly, using a pastry brush. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
To make the Tomato-Feta Filling, combine all the filling ingredients and fill the cases.
To make the Smoked Turkey — Olive Filling, combine all the filling ingredients except for the mustard and fill the cups. After the cups are filled, drizzle the mustard on top.
Makes 12
Chapter Six
Breakfast Before Class
Breakfast is not just an important meal for Muggles; it's important for wizards too — but it's especially important at Hogwarts because that's when the owls arrive to deliver letters and packages from home. The flood of owls can be a bit much if you're receiving fan mail or hate mail, like Hermione after she was written up in a newspaper by reporter Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Chapter 28) or like Harry after he gave his fateful interview in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Chapter 26).
How many different foods do you eat for breakfast every morn-ing? One or two, maybe. A bowl of cereal. A muffin and hot chocolate if you have the time. Pancakes and sausages if someone loves you very much (or it's a holiday). If you don't completely skip this important meal, then how about a breakfast of bacon and eggs, sausages, fried bread, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, kippers, black pudding, baked beans, and toast and marmalade? Oh, and don't forget the porridge with cream and treacle.
What an enormous amount of food for breakfast. But that's the traditional English breakfast for you. In the 1700s the upper classes, and later also the Victorian middle class, were served all of that and more. This heavy-duty meal is also called the full English fry-up, but today our cousins across the ocean eat much the same things that we do: plain old cereal or a muffin and coffee in the morning. But not to worry — you die-hard Harry Potter fans can still find the traditional fry-up at some British hotels and bed-and-breakfasts if you ever travel to England.
In the Great Hall, we find a mix of the traditional and modern. Some mornings find Harry eating humdrum cereal, but other mornings he enjoys toast and marmalade, porridge with treacle, kippers, sausages, or fried tomatoes.
This chapter does not include a recipe for toast, although Victorian cookbooks devoted chapters to the art of making toast properly. Today, with toasters and toaster ovens, it's pretty simple if you just pay attention. If you don't want to make your own marmalade, you can find this favorite topping for toast next to the jams and jellies in your local supermarket. Treacle or golden syrup can be found at a specialty food store and some supermarkets, or you can substitute maple syrup, light molasses, or corn syrup.
Herbed and Spiced Fried