Harry Potter Sweets

If you're planning a Harry Potter party, whether for a birthday or another event, Harry Potter sweets, including Harry Potter candy and baked goods, are essential. I held a Harry Potter-themed awards banquet at my school and made and purchased a whole lot of tasty Harry Potter-themed food, candy, cookies, and cupcakes for the event.



To make a Honeydukes sign (the name of the candy shop in the Harry Potter books), either paint it on a piece of wood cut into the shape of a diamond or print it out on a few separate pages of legal sized paper, cut off the white part of the paper, and glue it to cardboard to make it sturdier. Then just hang up the sign wherever your desserts are being displayed.

Harry Potter cupcakes are a great "main course" for the dessert or candy table. Since my event wasn't a birthday party, I decided to make individual cupcakes instead of a cake. The food was a serve yourself kind of buffet, which eliminated the problem of cutting up and serving one cake. If you're having a Harry Potter birthday, you might still want to consider cupcakes because you can make more than the number of guests in case people want more than one or other people show up.



To make the cupcakes, we used chocolate and vanilla cake box mixes from Trader Joe's , frosted them with vanilla frosting, and added sprinkles in the four house colors- Red for Gryffindor, Green for Slytherin, Yellow for Hufflepuff, and Blue for Ravenclaw.

We used gold and silver metallic cupcake liners for the house accent colors. You can also easily split your frosting into four bowls and dye the frosting in the house color so it matches the sprinkles also. We had originally planned to do that but ran out of time so we frosted them all in the same color.

Lightning bolt cookies are another Harry Potter baked good you can serve at your party. The lightning bolt is the shape of Harry's scar. These cookies are easy to make too!

Make your favorite sugar cookie recipe. Add a few drops of yellow food coloring and mix in evenly until the dough has a nice yellow lightning bolt color. Roll the dough to about 1/4" thick. Use a lightning bolt cookie cutter or a knife to cut the dough into the right shapes, then transfer the bolts to a cookie sheet, leaving room for them to expand, and sprinkle with yellow sparkly sprinkles. Bake according to the recipe.

Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans are an absolute must for your Harry Potter Party! They're so easy to make also. Just buy a giant bag of jellybeans (I used a 4 pound container of Kirkland's jellybeans in 49 flavors) and pour them into an apothecary jar. Print out a vintage-looking label (search for blank templates on Google images) with the name of the candy typed on it, cut and tape it on, put in a serving spoon, and you're ready to go.

Chocolate frogs are a classic Harry Potter candy. You can buy official Harry Potter chocolate frogs which come with a wizard card, but they are expensive. If you have the time, make your own.

To make chocolate frogs, first buy chocolate chips (I used milk and dark) and a frog candy mold. Melt the chips in a large microwave-safe container in the microwave and pour them into the molds until just filled. Allow them to harden and refrigerate. When they are completely solid (takes several hours), flip over the mold and pop them out.

Peppermint toads are a delicious and fun Harry Potter party treat. To make these, you need white chocolate candy melts, green food coloring, and a frog candy mold. Melt the candy melts in the microwave in a large microwave-safe bowl, stir in a few drops of the food coloring until even, and pour into the molds. Refrigerate until hardened, for several hours. Flip over the mold and pop out the frogs. You can add little chocolate eyes with a toothpick and a dot of melted milk or dark chocolate (use the chocolate from the chocolate frogs above).

The label on the jar should read "Peppermint Toads."

All you have to do to make Dumbledore's favorite lemon drops is buy a few bags of lemon drops, pour them into a glass jar, add a serving spoon, and tape a vintage label to the jar (see above for label instructions). I bought the lemon drops at the Dollar Store for just a buck per bag.

To make Harry Potter jelly slugs, like the ones that Ron threw up in the Chamber of Secrets book, just buy a bag of gummy worms (or another gummy shape) and pour them into an apothecary jar. Make a label with a blank vintage template, type in the candy name, print and stick to the jar, and add a serving spoon. Yummy and gross-looking!

To make the Weasley twins' Ton Tongue Toffee that promises to make your tongue grow in size and weight, just put pieces of English toffee in an apothecary jar and make a label like you did for the previous sweets. Note that the name should read "Ton Tongue Toffee" on the label. (it's definitely a tongue twister)

Chocolate cauldrons are delicious and worth the effort. All you do is make your favorite brownie recipe or mix and pour into a mini muffin tin. Be careful not to put too much brownie batter in the wells.

When the brownies are cooked and cooled, cover the top of one brownie in chocolate frosting and invert another brownie and put on top of the frosting, so you make a sandwich. Ice a little circle of green frosting in the middle like bubbly goo from a cauldron. Finally, cut the chocolate licorice or Twizzlers into 2-3" strips (licorice also needs to be cut in half the long way, Twizzlers unraveled) and poke them into the top of each cauldron cake by making two holes on the ends of the cake with a toothpick or wooden skewer.

Although salt water taffy isn't an official Harry Potter candy, we thought it was a perfect candy for a party setting because the pieces are individually wrapped. All I did was buy a couple bags of salt water taffy from Trader Joe's, poured it into a tall glass jar, and taped on a label (see above for making vintage labels). We called it "Honeydukes' Salt Water Taffy."

If you want to include other types of candy at your party, just think of a fun name and do what we did with the taffy.

Gummy frogs, like salt water taffy, are not an official Harry Potter candy but they go along with the theme so we included them anyway. Just pour a bag of gummy frogs (we used Haribo brand) into an apothecary jar and finish with a label and a pair of small plastic serving tongs.

Golden snitches are a sweet that look complicated but are actually easy to make. In the Harry Potter series the golden snitch is what players of the game Quidditch try to catch to win the game, but we turned it into a candy.

To make chocolate golden snitches, buy a package of Ferrero Rocher truffles, wrapped in gold foil (most are, but some special ones aren't, so make sure you check). Take the small sticker and brown paper cup off each truffle carefully, leaving behind the intact gold foil.

Then draw patterns of wings on wax paper or vellum and cut out the shapes. Tape or glue the wings to the top or back of each truffle and you're done! We gave these away as prizes for a game.

Pretzel wands are a fun Harry Potter treat. All you do is take plain pretzel rods, dip them in melted white candy melts 3/4 of the way up the pretzel, and drip off the excess chocolate. Then, holding them by the "handle," turn them slowly as you pour sprinkles over them. We used metallic jewel-tone sprinkles found in a specialty cake decorating shop.

To serve, you can either put them in special clear plastic pretzel bags (available at Michaels) or put them facedown in a tall glass jar as seen above.

With all this candy and chocolate your guests will be getting very thirsty, so make some classic Harry Potter drinks. Here is how to make three different drinks - Butterbeer, Pumpkin Juice, and Dragon Snot Punch.

Butterbeer
There are many recipes for making Butterbeer online, but we did it the simplest way we could find. Just pour cream soda into a pitcher and add a tablespoon or so to taste of butterscotch-flavored syrup (we used Torani's).

Pumpkin Juice
Version #1: As with the butterbeer, there are more authentic versions of pumpkin juice out there involving real pumpkin, but if you want a drink that tastes really good, combine approximately equal parts of orange soda (we used Orange Fanta) and pulp-free orange juice in a pitcher.

Version #2: For actual pumpkin-tasting pumpkin juice, or a more authentic version, combine the following ingredients:

2 cups strained pureed pumpkin (so only the juice is left) or diced pumpkin put in a juicer
2 cups apple juice
1/2 pineapple juice
Pumpkin pie spice to taste (or cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger)

Dragon Snot Punch
Dragon Snot Punch, or Troll Bogey Punch, is a drink Harry Potter fans made up and we have our own version here. Fill a large punch bowl with ginger ale, several cups of pineapple juice to taste, add several scoops of lime sherbet (as you can see from the photo, we had 8 scoops of sherbet for a very large bowl), and drops of green food coloring until green to your liking. Stir until combined.

This drink is REALLY good and is my personal favorite. In the photo above the drink hasn't been stirred yet, but the final product looks like a thin green milkshake.

Want your guests to be able to take home your special candy treats? Make some Honeydukes candy favor bags!

We found small kraft paper bags at Michaels and printed out small Honeydukes labels from a picture found online, then glued them to the bags. The Honeydukes logo throughout this lens is the logo used at the Harry Potter Wizarding World Theme Park in Orlando, Florida. Click here for a picture of the Honeydukes logo (requires editing).