partAre you hosting a Harry Potter party and wondering what to serve your guests? 

While there are lots of obvious candy choices like Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans or Chocolate Frogs, you might be looking for a heartier, more filling option. 

We threw a Harry Potter Halloween dinner party for adults this October, and served up plenty of dishes and drinks that fit the theme but still filled our bellies. Take a leaf out of our wizard cook book and try this Harry Potter party food.

Butterbeer

What would a Harry Potter party be without Butterbeer? Austin has been making this Butterbeer recipe since we were dating (in fact, he made it for me on our second date just to impress me!). It tastes exactly like the Butterbeer served at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando and The Warner Brothers Studio Tour in London to me. It’s got plenty of sugar, but it’s sure to be a crowd pleaser! 

Click here for Austin’s amazing Butterbeer recipe. 

Pumpkin Walnut Chili

I wanted to serve something with fall flavors since the party was in October and I was decorating with so many real and ceramic pumpkins. It’s a good rule of thumb to make dishes you’ve tested out before when you’re throwing a dinner party to minimize culinary disasters, so I decided to make one of my favorite recipients of all time: pumpkin walnut chili. 

I discovered this unique chili combo while searching for new Instant Pot Recipes, and over the years I’ve added my own little touches and customizations to it.

Click here for my Pumpkin Walnut Chili recipe. The best part? I served it up out of pumpkin-shaped soup bowls! I found those at Target this year. You can try this link to see if they are still in stock. I can’t wait to use them around Thanksgiving for many years to come! 

Great Hall Banquet Spread

We wanted our guests to feel like they were really enjoying the “welcome back” feast students eat in the Great Hall on their first night back to Hogwarts. The easiest way to replicate that decadence was to throw together a cheese board. This was also a perfect tool for snacking as the night went on and we played games, because we just picked up the board and moved it into the Common Room (living room) with us. 

On our banquet board, we included:

4 Cheeses

Peppered Salami

Carr’s Crackers

Seasoned Almonds

Dried Apricots

Spiced Jams

You could also use things like a veggie tray or fruit tray if you are serving a younger audience. It would make a healthy contrast to kids’ birthday cake, it’s cheap and easy to put together, and it totally fits the theme! 

Polyjuice Potion Punch

This punch recipe is one of my mom’s absolute favorites, and I’m pretty sure she served it at almost every single one of my birthday parties growing up. It also happens to look a lot like Pollyjuice Potion! We sipped it while we ate our chili. 

Add 8-10 scoops of your favorite sorbet flavor to a punch bowl. (Rainbow works the best for Pollyjuice because the colors sort of blend together and eventually turn a little murky and brown too.) Add one liter of gingerale. Serve up with a ladle! 

We served ours out of a cauldron to make our guests feel like they were really sampling a potion from the Hogwarts dungeons. Unlike my mom at my birthday parties as a kid, we also spiked our Pollyjuice cauldron with a little spiced rum since our party guests were adults only. The recipe tastes great whether you add some 21+ potion ingredients, or you don’t drink at all like my parents. I love the versatility of uses for this punch. 

Pumpkin Pasties

Remember how I mentioned that it’s a rule to only serve food you’ve made before at dinner parties? Well, I guess rules were made to be broken! I didn’t have time to practice and perfect my Pumpkin Pasties recipe before I made it for the party, but luckily they still turned out super delicious. 

I made two different types of Pumpkin Pasties: sweet and savory. They perfectly complimented the pumpkin walnut chili, and we dipped the savory ones in for an even more amazing flavor combo! 

Click here for my Pumpkin Pasties recipe.

Treacle Tart

Our sweet friend Spencer (who is probably the biggest Harry Potter fan I know) wanted to contribute to the dinner party, so he brought us Treacle Tart for dessert! Harry mentions that it’s his favorite in book 1, which is the kind of detail Spencer would definitely know. 

You can find Harry Potter themed recipes, crafts, chapter analyses, and fan theories on Spencer’s blog Order of Merlin: Muggle Class. 

Amortentia Cocktail

Our nightcap was a cocktail inspired by the love potion Amortentia. This recipe was also created by our friend Spencer! 

In the Harry Potter series, Amortentia is a love potion that smells unique to each person based on the things and people they love. Harry and Hermione both smell something that reminds them of Ginny and Ron while brewing Amortentia in book 6.

Spencer wanted to recreate that sensation by crafting a cocktail that includes all of his wife Sarah’s favorite flavors! So romantic. 

Helpfully, Sarah’s all time favorite flavor is cranberry, which gives the potion a beautiful red color. Here is Spencer’s Amortentia cocktail recipe:

1 Shot Cranberry Vodka

1 Shot Lime Rum

1-2 oz Cranberry Cocktail

Juice of Half a Lime

Lime Wedge Garnish

Get Creative with Harry Potter Party Food

Even if you decide not to copy these exact recipes, the fun of the Wizarding World is that there are so many opportunities for creativity! Put a Harry Potter spin on any of your favorite drinks or recipes and your guests can be magically transported to Hogwarts for the evening too.