I’m very pleased to post the first outstanding entry in the Fanciful Foods and Kitchen Witchery Contest, submitted by fitzmap. I’m also really glad I learned how to read Middle English in college.

This medieval-inspired apple bread pudding is fantastic: I’ll definitely be curling up with it and an Arthurian romance.

There are five spots left for excellent qualifying recipes, so keep your cauldrons on the fire from now until September 15!
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Last Saturday night, my dinner date invited me to sip from his glass of Young’s Luxury Double Chocolate Stout. As it’s my wont to sip from my companions’ glasses even without invitation, I was happy to oblige. It’s an intense drink: very rich and very chocolatey, in fact, but nicely bitter as well. What I noticed most of all, though, was a smokiness that reminded me of…bacon.
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Get cooking and enter to win a beautiful magic wand, custom made for you by The Wand Shop!

Send me, in an email, a recipe inspired by magic or a flight of fancy. It may be your own version of a dish that has captured your imagination in story, song, or film. It may be a dish whose ingredients have a fabled lore. It may be a food eaten in a magical realm entirely of your own imagining. It may be a confection with unusually bewitching properties. (It may not contain eye of newt, toe of frog, etc.) These are intentionally broad guidelines: be as imaginative as you wish. Both sweets and savories are welcome, as well as beverages.
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I’ve had a lot of irons on the fire these days, with the unfortunate result that in the past month I’ve spent much more time in front of my laptop than my stove. I’ve also just spent a week eating leftovers from a spectacularly over-catered family party. Just when I thought I might take on the physical characteristics of the hundredth Swedish meatball I consumed, the fridge emptied: I can cook again, indeed I have to cook again.

And in my current frame of mind, all I want to cook are magical, fanciful, delightful things. This is hugely influenced by what I’m doing in my spare moments, which is re-reading the Harry Potter series. I’d forgotten how much food and feasting there is in those stories, and how literally bewitching is the very mention of butterbeer and cauldron cakes. What you see above, by the way, is a fairly tasty but decidedly failed attempt at butterbeer, consisting here of sparkling apple cider and caramel syrup. We’ll get into that in another post.

In the meantime, I’d like a little help from you, your friends, your children, your grandchildren, your wee siblings.

View details and get coooking!