Magical gory food!

The highly popular Harry Potter series by successful author J.K Rowling has been read by children all over the world. It follows the story of a young boy who discovers that he is a wizard and is to start wizarding school. He makes two new best froends: Ron and Hermione and learns all about this new magical world which even contains queer new foods, which are often gruesome or comical. We see chocolate frogs and cockroach clusters, pumpkin pasties, butterbeer and fizzing whizzbees. I thought it would be interesting to try some recipes and so looked to a special cookbook.

In The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dina Bucholz I was rather unimpressed with the book, the recipes were basic and imprecise, and rather than containing the unusual and ‘gory’ magical food such as ‘puking pastilles’, ‘cockroach clusters,’ or “fizzing whizzbees.” Instead, it was more concerned with the ‘britishness’ of the food represented in the Harry Potter series with recipe for “bangers and mash” and “roast chicken.” I decided to be creative and devise by own gory magical recipes, and with the help of my younger brother and decided to really get in to the gruesome imagination of a child. We made some cockroach  clusters with marshmallows to give a ‘squishy’ taste and crushed pretzels to give it a ‘crunchy’ texture, we then slathered the whole lot in chocolate and left it to set. Similarly with the ‘fizzing whizzbees,’ we got hold of a bee shaped mould and filled it with melted chocolate, sprinkling some popping candy over the top it.

The friendly half giant half wizard, whom the trio immediately befriend, offers them ‘rock cakes’ the first time they visit Hagrid in his hut. The rock cakes “almost broke their teeth,” and another time Harry has to abandon the rock cakes after he felt an “ominous cracking noise from one of his back teeth.”  Below is a recipe for:

Hagrid’s Rock Cakes!

Preparation Time

27 minutes

Servings

36 servings

Ingredients

2 cups self-rising flour (or plain flour sifted with 2 tsp baking powder)

Pinch of salt (optional)

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1/2 cup fine granulated sugar

1 cup mixed dried fruit (such as a mixture of moist packs of dried apricots, raisins and cranberries)

Finely grated rind of small orange

1 egg, beaten

3 tablespoons milk

Juice of 1/2 small orange

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 °F.

Lightly grease baking tray.

Sift flour and salt.

Using pastry blender, cut margarine or butter into the flour.

Add sugar, dried fruit and orange rind. Stir in egg.

Add milk and just enough juice to make a stiff, sticky consistency that will stand in peaks when stirred with a knife.

Put walnut-sized heaps of mixture on baking tray.

Allow them to keep a rough, rocky shape.

Do not flatten or smooth them.

Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes or until golden and firm. Cool on rack. Cool completely for flavor to develop.

To conclude: The Harry potter magical food makes children ‘read’ the food in surprisingly positive ways. This is not to say that they would find these foods tasty, but it is more a form of entertainment for them, a way in which they can delight from disgust and think creatively themselves about food.