Fictional Foods and Beverages

I hosted a housewarming party last weekend for my family, who are all huge Potter-fans. I wanted to make something interesting, so I decided to make butterbeer. We were debating whether butterbeer exists outside of the Potter universe, but this was a question easily resolved by a quick wikipedia search. Butterbeer is exclusively a J.K. Rowling invention.



Here's the recipe that I tried.

Ingredients:
1 cup (8 oz) club soda or cream soda
1/2 cup (4 oz) butterscotch syrup (ice cream topping)
1/2 tablespoon butter

Directions:
Measure butterscotch and butter into a 2 cup (16 oz) glass. Microwave on high for 1 to 1½ minutes, or until syrup is bubbly and butter is completely incorporated. Stir and cool for 30 seconds, then slowly mix in club soda. Mixture will fizz quite a bit. Serve in two coffee mugs or small glasses.

Result: it turned out way too sweet and too buttery to drink more than 1 tablespoon. It was fizzy and buttery though - just as it's intended to be.

Other butterbeer recipes like this might be better.

This spawned another discussion on the topic of mead and ambrosia.

This recipe for ambrosia salad made out of canned fruits sounds completely lame. My coworkers think ambrosia should taste like barfi, an Indian dessert made out of cashews/almonds and milk.

Barfi (great name for a delicious, yellowish dessert wrapped in edible tin foil!)

And although mead is not a fictional drink, few people make it nowadays, so it qualifies as "weird". Manhattan Meadery took on the challenge of bringing it back to the people. You can try their mead at the following places in New York:

Astor Wine & Spirits – 399 Lafayette St, New York NY
Chelsea Wine Vault – 75 9th Ave, New York, NY
Big Nose, Full Body Wine Shop – 382 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Spuyten Duyvil – 359 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Abigail Cafe and Wine Bar – 807 Classon Ave. Brooklyn, NY
Camaje Resturant – 85 Macdougal St, New York, NY
Perilla – 9 Jones St, New York, NY