Like LESS sickly butterscotch...

During a recent journey to the wizarding world, I found myself utterly addicted to the frozen variety of our favorite sweet sensation.  So it only seemed fitting that frozen butterbeer would be my first attempted recreation.

Being that I'm about as creative in the kitchen as Tonks is graceful, I wasn't entirely sure where to start.  So, I looked up as many recipes as I could find and started buying ingredients.  I came out with so much stuff I started to feel like maybe I should have taken home-ec in high school. Or better yet, potions.

Cast of characters.  A whisk is not an ingredient, but it made for a cute picture.

Seeing as I lacked the ingredients (or know how) to start myself off with some Felix Felicis, I settled on the motley crew shown above.  Many recipes I found call for butterscotch syrup in the form that you may put it on top of ice cream.  For my part, I wanted the liquid part of my beverage to be slightly less sticky.

I started out by trying to recreate the scrumptious foam layer of the butter beer and adapted a recipe that had potential from Chica and Jo.  While their's called for just heavy cream and powdered sugar, I felt like it should have a little more emphasis on the buttery notes. What I remember best from my wizardly visit is the wonderful symphony of buttery and sugary flavors that was created when the foam and the drink combined, but I am unconvinced that the butter belongs in the liquid/ice part itself.  So, I added a tablespoon of butter, 2 extra tablespoons of powdered sugar, and a teaspoon of butterscotch syrup (the intended-for-beverages kind shown above) to their already pretty good invention.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention, I melted the butter first.

When I decided that I had played enough with the foam, my magical refrigerator dispensed some crushed ice (Mr. Weasly would be proud) and I poured in about 3/4 a glass of cream soda.  I chose to use a local variety, Teddy's, that I'm currently quite in love with.  For the frozen version of this drink, I think it's important that whichever cream soda is used, it be highly carbonated.  This helps the drink to have a nice warmth going down, which always makes me happy.  Then I got crazy and added a table spoon of butterscotch syrup.  And a tablespoon of shortbread syrup.  And a tablespoon of caramel syrup.  Zonko's won't know what hit them.

Finally, I shook up my foam mixture in a squeeze bottle (Which had far too small a hole for easy handling.  Must get a new one.  Where's my remembrall?) I poured it on top of my cream soda, and the beautiful substance above appeared.  Butterbeer!

The verdict?

Well, I'm not quite there yet.  My overzealous sweet tooth got more than a little carried away and the drink with all of those sugary syrups was probably more than a little on the sickly sweet side of things.  The crushed ice was not nearly crushed enough (that's what I get for leaving magic to muggle technology) and the foam was a little too thin. 

So, while Madame Rosmerta doesn't have anything to worry about just yet, I do think that I'm on the right track.  In the meantime, I just need to figure out how to conjure some snow...