A Harry Potter week wouldn’t be complete without a recipe playing off the iconic beverage of Hogsmeade!

Butterbeer.

Butterbeer is a favorite drink of all Hogwarts students and patrons of the Three Broomsticks. When Universal Orlando opened up their Wizarding World of Harry Potter, there was a lot of recipe development to bring J.K. Rowlings’s drink come to life for us Muggles to enjoy.

There are countless copy cat recipes floating around the internet, but I’ve yet to try my hand at any. The use of butter extract weirds me out a little bit to be honest. A lot of butterbeer insipred desserts also use the ingredient, so when I found this blondie recipe without even a splash of butter extract I knew I had to try it!

I’ve made these blondies twice now.

My sister-in-law came down from Northern California to spend a day with the boys and I put her and Firecracker to work baking!

I thought it’d be fun to bake them in the cast iron skillet. Unfortunately the edges puffed up a considerable amount and there weren’t really enough decent squares to be cut out of the center to take the effort of setting up my Harry Potter photo shoot.

We’re still not sure what to blame: over mixing, Firecracker’s enthusiastic dump of baking soda, the use of cast iron, or my pulverization of Boo-terscotch M&Ms instead of butterscotch chips.

The blondies were incredibly addictive though and every time I found myself in the kitchen (which is often when you’re a food blogger) I grabbed a bite or two.

I knew I had to make them again. I decided to use a 9×9″ square cake pan instead of my cast iron skillet. I also took the extra time to hand chop the M&Ms instead of using the food processor. Oh, and Firecracker didn’t get to help me with batch 2.

The edges still puffed up! But I did have more salvageable area to work with. I, again, ate the entire second batch of blondies all by myself.

Last week I found a butterscotch soda, so I picked up another bag of those Halloween M&Ms. I will be making these blondies one more time! Maybe this time I’ll share?

Butterbeer Blondies

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1 1/2 C brown sugar
• 1/2 C sugar
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp cream soda
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 C flour
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 bag (8 oz) white Boo-tterscotch M&Ms, chopped

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9×9″ cake pan.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugars until smooth. Add the egg, vanilla, and cream soda, then mix until combined.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add to the stand mixer and mix until just incorporated.
4. Fold in the chopped M&Ms. Spread batter into prepared pan. Bake 45-50 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out cleanly. Allow blondies to cool before cutting.

*This recipe is adapted from Tracy at http://sugarcrafter.net/2011/07/14/butterbeer-blondies/*