Harry Potter Butterbeer Cookies

Today I made Harry Potter Butterbeer cookies again. The photo on Pinterest looks like this:

Butterbeer Sugar Cookies

• 3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar (packed)
• 2 sticks butter
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp butter flavoring
• 3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, set aside.
3. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the egg, butter flavoring, and vanilla; mix until well-blended.
4. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat just until combined, scraping down the bowl, especially the bottom. (The dough will be quite thick…you may need to knead in stray bits of flour from the bottom of the bowl by hand.)
5. Roll on a floured surface to about 1/4″ and cut into shapes. Place on parchment lined baking sheets and bake for 9-12 minutes, depending on the size of your cutter. Let sit a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Butterbeer Glaze
(For about 12 cookies…sooo you should totally make more)

• 2/3 cup butterscotch chips
• 1/8 cup evaporated milk
• 1 TBSP light corn syrup
• pinch coarse salt

1. Place all of the ingredients in a glass or metal bowl and heat over a pot of simmering water (or a double boiler). Stir occasionally, until melted and smooth.
2. Put the cooled cookies on a wire rack on a baking sheet. Pour the glaze over the cookies and spread with an offset spatula. If using the fondant house crests, place these on the wet glaze to adhere

The first time I made these, I wasn’t too wild about the cookies themselves, because the cookies were a little grainy. They kind of had the consistency of a pecan sandie, which isn’t bad, but I prefer the butter cookie personally. And besides, spritz cookies are a lot easier than roll-and-cut ones.

Despite not liking the cookies, the butterscotch glaze was enchanting, so I have since paired that with these standard butter spritz cookies that are on the Wilton site. I stick to that recipe, though if I want to make them extra buttery, instead of the almond extract, I put in a teaspoon of butter flavoring.

Because of all that backstory, this blog post is going to focus on the glaze rather than the whole cookie. The original recipe tells you to melt the ingredients slowly in a double boiler, which I did the first time. It was fine, but more mess than I like to deal with in the end. Since I don’t have a magic wand with which to deal with that, I have sought alternative methods for melting. The last couple of times I have made these, I have done them in the microwave.

After putting all of the ingredients into a microwave-safe cup, I heated them for 45 seconds on medium power, stirred, and repeated the process. Then I removed the cup from the microwave and stirred for about 30 seconds until the mixture was smooth. To be honest, this method worked better than the double boiler when it came to removing all the lumps from the butterscotch chips.

Once the mixture was thick and smooth, I put dollops onto the cookies. These were laid out on a cookie sheet with wax paper, so that they could be chilled (and the icing hardened) in the refrigerator. (That’s what I use the unoccupied shelves my wine cooler for, actually.)