Nerdy Craft Time! Food Edition Part 1!

For this nerdy craft time I'm going to combine my 2 favorite things (aside from my child and my dog that is), Food and stuff I nerd out to!

I had several ideas for this Nerdy Craft Time food edition, so I decided to split it up into 3 separate posts. 7 recipes in one post just seemed like A LOT to go through all at once. It still killed me to split it all up. I just wanted to make it all at once and gorge myself on delicious nerdy food! But, for once, I exhibited self control. In Part 1 we'll visit Harry Potter. I found a decent sounding recipe for Butter Beer that I changed to suit ingredients that I already had in my house. I also thought of a super fun way to bring Acid Pops to life, such an underrated sweet from Harry Potter, who wouldn't want to burn a hole in their tongue? 

Acid Pops!!

So many exclamation marks around here! Because my general area doesn't sell pop rocks unless it is Halloween (which it isn't anymore. *tear*), I had to improvise with sour powder from a Sour Baby Bottle Pop. Yes, they totally still make them!

I am well aware as to how horrible my pan is. No, I don't make cookies on this pan. Yes, I'm covering it with foil. No I'm never going to throw it away.

I concocted this recipe because I can't just take regular premade suckers, dip them in pop rocks, and call it a day. You'll need a bag of Jolly Ranchers and a Sour Baby Bottle Pop or two, depending on how many suckers you're making. I found one Bottle Pop covers about 7 or 8 suckers, depending on how coated  you want them.You'll also need some sucker sticks, which I didn't have and was too lazy to drive all the way out to our 30 minutes away Walmart just to get them. I used wooden skewers and cut the pointed end off.  But Walmart and Target both carry sucker sticks for like $3, just fyi.  You will also need a large cookie sheet type pan, tin foil, and something to grease it with, butter, cooking spray, olive oil, whatever.

Before you start, line you cookie sheet with tin foil, now you won't ruin your cookie sheet on the off chance that you mess up. Wooo for not having to buy more ridiculously priced cooking things! So you line your cookie sheet, next you'll want to grease it down. You don't want like pools of grease all up in your pan, just give it a quick spray. You can avoid all of this if you use non stick aluminum foil. Just saying.  I so would have used it but again... the closest store that sells that is 30 minutes (one way) away from my house.

Now pick 2 or 3 Jolly Ranchers and place them on your pan side by side. Like an equal sign, =.  And bam, you've got a sucker! (almost) Make sure the candy is touching and keep a good couple of inches in between each sucker because it does spread. However, you can make little square forms of tinfoil by just taking a piece and creating a square with higher sides then you think you need (like a little square boat) and just place your Jolly Ranchers in there. You could totally fit more suckers on your tray if they aren't going to spread out. I like them all funky shapes and different.

Now with your oven on 275 degrees you'll want to pop them in for pretty much exactly 6 minutes, until they are melted together. Pull them out, immediately place a stick on each sucker, and press down slightly.

While you're waiting for them to cool, pour your Baby Bottle Pop powder into a bowl. Peel your suckers off the foil once cooled and  dip them quickly into a cup of water, allowing the excess to drip off, you don't want it swimming wet but just slightly moist. Then sprinkle your sucker with sour powder.  Eat, enjoy, done! You have a super sourery sweet sucker to melt your tongue! I know they aren't impressive to look at, but they are delicious.


You can also use regular Baby Bottle Pop powder, I think the strawberry powder on these is divine! It isn't sour but it's super sugary sweet with a tiny tart kick from the Jolly Ranchers.

Recap!

What you'll need

Jolly Ranchers
1-2 Sour Baby Bottle Pops

Sucker sticks

Cookie Sheet

Tin Foil

Cooking spray (or use non stick foil)

 

1. Preheat your oven to 275 degrees.
2. Line your cookie sheet with foil and spray lightly with cooking spray
3. lay 2 - 3 Jolly Rancher candies on your cookie sheet and place in the oven for 5-8 minutes
4. place a stick in each still hot sucker and allow to cool
5. Pour the baby bottle pop powder into a bowl
6. wait until the suckers are cooled and peel them off the sheet, dip them quickly into a cup of water and allow the excess to drip off.
7. sprinkle the suckers with the powder
8. Enjoy!

 

 

On to our Butter Beer! Oh my goodness this was so delicious! I found this recipe on the Food Network website HERE. I strayed from it a bit though. I don't keep sweetened condensed milk in my house, I can't think of a single time that I've used it. See above as to why I didn't run out to get it. So I improvised with whipping cream, vanilla, and sugar. We are also simple non fancy folk who only have stick butter in our house and with the ridiculous price of butter I completely refuse to go out and buy some whipped up crap just so I can use a tablespoon of it. To be honest, you could probably leave the butter out, I didn't taste it and I have no idea why it's in there. It was just one thing I kept in the recipe from the original. Now that I look at it, I pretty much changed everything from the original recipe except I kept cream soda and butter. Could I claim this as my own recipe then....  Well I also used butterscotch chips because I could only find that magic hardening butterscotch topping in my grocery store. I'm actually totally weirded out by those toppings that harden, like why are they smooth but not warm and then they get hard when they are cold? Why? What's in them that does that? I suppose I could figure it out if I looked at the label. Plus I don't like a crunchy coating on my ice cream. My point here is that what my grocery store did have was butterscotch chips for, I don't know, cookies or something. I'm sort of grossed out by chunks of butterscotch in cookies but hey, to each their own right? If you couldn't tell, I am not a fan of butterscotch. It reminds me of the candies in the bottom of my grandma's purse that she would fish out for us and we'd have to eat them to be polite. You know, full of sand and dirt and god knows what else had settled at the bottom of that lovely woman's giant handbag. I love her, but man am I glad she doesn't carry candy anymore. Because I'm not going to type commentary through the entire recipe, it's all pretty straight forward, I'll just throw up some photos and the recipe will be below. Recipes with photos are always much more interesting, to me at least.




(left to right) Heavy whipping cream, Cream soda, Vanilla, Butter, and Butterscotch chips in the front

Because I used a non stick pan I poured my half melted butterscotch chip cream into a bowl to whisk it and let the chips melt completely.

I just used the same pan that I used to melt the butterscotch to heat the cream soda. If your cream soda is room temperature you don't have to heat it. You just don't want it ice cold.

I have absolutely no idea how I ended up with these Coca-Cola mugs, but I found a full set of 6 in the back of my cupboard. They are the only clear glasses I have (my every day glasses are blue tinted glass) so I had to use them. What makes them even more awesome is the fact that they are off kilter a bit, see how the one on the right seems to be leaning? Yeah it's totally made that way. The one on the left is leaning toward me so you don't notice it as much, but they are all like that. I love it!

It's not quite as frothy as I wanted it to be, but it was still super delicious!

 This makes about 2 glasses of butterbeer. If you notice, mine weren't totally full, add about 1/2 to 1 (cup or tablespoon whatever the ingredient measurement is) to each ingredient and you should get at least 2 full full glasses. Or you could use mugs.

What you'll need

1/2 C Heavy Whipping Cream

2 T Vanilla

1 T Sugar



1/4 C Butterscotch chips (like chocolate chips but butterscotch, not butterscotch candy chips)

1 T Butter

2 C Cream Soda

 

 



1. In a sauce pan combine the whipping cream, vanilla, sugar, butterscotch chips, and butter. Cook on medium stirring constantly until chips are almost melted. (About 5 minutes, your chips should look like tiny chunks and your cream should have turned a carmel color) Try not to let it boil. If it does just turn your heat down and continue stirring.
2. Pour into a heat proof bowl and whisk until smooth
3. In the same sauce pan pour your cream soda and heat on medium until warm, stirring occasionally. It doesn't have to be boiling or anything, just warm it up. If your cream soda is room temperature you can skip this step.
4. Divide your butterscotch mixture into 2 glasses, top off with the cream soda, and stir to combine.
5. Enjoy!

If it's too hot and you want to drink it right away, add an ice cube and stir it up. It will cool it down enough to enjoy without scalding your throat but it will still be warm.

 

Yum!

So I really hope you try these! Next nerdy food edition will be Game of Thrones!

 

As always,
Enjoy!