Harry Potter Party Decor – Potions

6 January 20219 January 2021 ~ The Author ~ 1 Comment

We’ve been having a throw back moment on Harry Potter parties lately, so I thought sharing some of our beloved HP themed party ideas on this blog might be helpful to those who are planning/organising one.

Here are ideas on how to create your own stash of wizard “potions” and “potion ingredients” for your next Harry Potter themed party.

INGREDIENTS

Acromantula Venom – Green or black colouring and water
African Red Pepper – If you have red chilli peppers (real or artificial), you can use them. Take care that it’s safe for children though, if it’s a children’s party
African Sea Salt – Any sea salt (or plain cooking salt) available in your kitchen

Cat Hair – If you have a cat, collect some of its stray hairs. We don’t have a cat, so we plucked out some of our gray hairs (lol!!!) and cut the strands into shorter lengths.
Cinnamon – There should be some of the real stuff in your kitchen.

Dragon Dung – We used raisins.

Gillyweed – Add green colouring to water. Then take some magical-looking greens from your backyard (or front yard), and add into the coloured water.
Infusion of Wormwood – Green colouring and water
Lavender – The real thing, if available, or similar looking herbs or grasses.
Mint – If you have real mint leaves from your garden or kitchen, that would be perfect!
Moondew – Plain water in a coloured (wine) bottle
Moonstone (Powdered) – Use white or yellow luminous powder. If you have none, you can improvise and use any white powder, mixed with glitter powder.
Morning Dew – Plain water

Octopus Powder – Some random spice from the kitchen. I might have used Allspice.
Peppermint – The real thing, if available, or similar looking herbs or grasses.

Salamander Blood – Again, colouring and water.
Salt – Of course, whatever salt you’ve got in your kitchen should be fine.

Unicorn Blood – I used some light blue glittery craft paint, ‘coz it does look magical enough.

Wartcap Powder – I used talcum powder, but it should be a beige-coloured powder. If you’ve got some old face powder you were planning to throw out, that should work. In desperate cases, lightly toast some flour.
Wiggenbush Bark – any dried bark from your backyard will do.

POTIONS

Ageing Potion – Create a dull green colouring and water mixture
Amortentia – Add red food colouring (or any kind of liquid colouring) to water.
Calming Draught – Dull blue colouring and water
Draught of Living Death – Plain water.
Elixir of Life – Red colouring and water.
Essence of Insanity – Bright green colouring and water
Felix Felicis – Cooking oil. Or you can add a bit of yellow colouring to water, if you’d rather have a water-based liquid.
Polyjuice Potion – Appearance varies depending on the person to be impersonated, so you can have it looking however you want.
Skele-Gro – Yellow colouring and water
Veritaserum – Plain water. Use coloured bottle so it looks a bit fancy.

Harry Potter Themed Party

9 December 20209 January 2021 ~ The Author

We’ve been enjoying the Harry Potter films lately. Yeah, I know, those films have been out for, like, forever. But just a while ago, one TV station was showing one HP film each week. Of course, we’ve seen them before, but it was nice to view them again and review the forgotten parts. Besides, when you go browsing the net for HP themed parties and see all the details that others have prepared for their parties, how can you not hold one?

So, after throwing a Harry Potter themed party for hubby (yeah, he just let’s me do anything as long as I let him cook his favourite dishes for the party), we threw another HP themed party for Potterhead friends who missed out on the first party. So here are the details of the two HP parties:

This is what greeted the guests at the entrance – Hogwarts houses banners, and HP related stuff on the table, including a few HP books, some wands, photo booth props (neckties in HP house colours), chess pieces, some potion bottles, a chess board, Hogwarts Express signage, and a letter from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

On the side wall, we had a huge rectangular mirror that’s normally stays there, so I decided to pretend it was the Mirror of Erised and labelled it accordingly.

As you step into the lounge area, you’ll see that I had stuck some ‘wanted’ posters on the wall….

…while on the other side, I had shelves of various potion ingredients (see potions and potion ingredient ideas here).

I placed some battery-operated tea lights behind some of the glass bottles to show off the coloured liquids inside the bottles. Otherwise, it would have been too dark in the lower shelves for people to notice somebody fun in there.

Just beside the painting, I also had some fake “wooden” arrow signs bearing names of some of the places in the HP world.

Here’s an early shot of the buffet table. Don’t ask me for a later shot of it when hubby started crowding it with all the foods, because I don’t have a presentable one. 😀 Hubby prepared most of the foods, which made him tired but really happy and proud of his accomplishment. I prepared the sweets, bread and the salads.

I made him a very simple birthday cake – my go-to carrot cake. I didn’t want to make him Hagrid’s cake, simply because we didn’t want a cake with pink icing. Instead, I just created a little bunting featuring the Hogwarts house colours and added a golden snitch in the middle of the cake. Simple, but super-yum…and I kid you not.

Of course you know that no HP themed party is complete without Bertie Botts’ Every Flavour Beans. They’re just the ordinary jelly beans I found at Coles, but that little striped box I painstakingly cut and assembled just nailed the illusion.

I am ever so glad Australia’s got Freddos – our very own chocolate frogs. Gave me the perfect excuse to take this lazy option, instead of having to search and shop for a frog mold and make chocolate frogs from scratch.

Finally, one of my most favourite HP-related item in the party – the Golden Snitches! They’re actually just egg yolks and condensed milk, cooked and shaped into balls (get the recipe here). Days before the party, I spent one evening preparing all these snitches wings while watching Avengers on the TV.

I love how they turned out, even though I was a few wings short in the end. But still, admit it, they are pretty and look like they’re ready to fly away. The guests were very amused with this dish, and they weren’t disappointed ‘coz the yellow balls were tasty too.

Golden Snitches Dessert Recipe

2 October 201928 November 2019 ~ The Author

To produce golden snitches in food form when I threw a Harry Potter theme birthday party for hubby (why not?), I didn’t want to do what others have done, which was to create round cakes (cake pops) and cover the snitches with artificially coloured icing to make them look like snitches. Besides, I had too much on my plate then to bother intricately decorating each cake pop. I just wanted something that was relatively easy to make.

Then I recalled a homemade sweet called Yema. I knew a few people whose mums used to make these sweets and get them to sell these to other kids at school. The brightness or dullness of this dish’s natural yellow colour depends on the ingredients you use and their proportions. Some can be quite pale, while others darker and almost brownish. In addition, you can also coat the yema balls with raw sugar or glaze them with caramelized sugar (which is a bit more tricky).

For the duration of hubby’s Harry Potter party, I called them not yema, but Golden Snitches. Here’s the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

10 egg yolks
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, or zest
Raw sugar for coating

Procedure:

In a non-stick pan, combine egg yolks, condensed milk and lemon until well blended. Place pan on stove, over low heat, and stir constantly until thick enough to be formed into small balls. It is important to keep on stirring and scraping the sides and bottom of the pan while cooking to avoid burning parts of it.

Remove from heat and let the mixture cool. When cool enough to handle, shape them into small balls, about an inch in diameter, which seems to be just a good size for a snitch. Roll each ball in raw sugar.

Arrange in a serving tray with enough spaces in between the snitches so they don’t look too crowded when you add the wings.

I made the wings days in advance so they’re ready to add to the golden snitches on the day of the party. I used toothpicks, aluminum foil and double-sided tape to make them, while seated on the couch, also watching an action movie with the hubby. 🙂

Harry Potter Themed Cakes

6 February 201620 February 2020 ~ The Author

Perhaps the TV station GO must have heard of hubby’s Harry Potter themed birthday celebration. Because a few weeks later, this station decided to show the Harry Potter films every Friday evening. On the first Friday evening, I was wearing the Gryffindor gray pullover sweater vest, Gryffindor scarf, and a witch’s hat, and munched on the remaining jelly beans and chocolate frogs while watching the movie. I’m not really a super fanatic of HP, but since I had all the props lying around, I thought I might as well have fun with them! Hahaha.

Speaking of Harry Potter, today I’m sharing with you some of the amazing Harry Potter themed cakes I came across while researching for hubby’s party weeks ago. I’m linking each photo and caption to their sources. They might come in handy in case you’re planning an HP party of your own, so here they go…

Photo credits: