To the delight of zillions of fans, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" hit the shelves (only to fly off in an instant) at midnight. Even though nobody got it for me for my birthday, and I don't intend to buy it right away, my sister, her friend Katherine, and I thought we would celebrate the occasion yesterday with a quasi-magical recipe.

As several books in the obviously immensely popular series have attested, "butterbeer" appears to be the preferred beverage of Potter & Company. For a long time, knowledge of anything about this exotic-sounding drink had evaded me. Does it taste like butter? Does it taste like beer? Perhaps both? Is it even real?

On Thursday my eye caught a butterbeer recipe -- among other Harry-Potter-related ones -- in the newspaper, and so I just had to try it. So yesterday we Potter fans (or whatever they call themselves) got together for some sort of Potter Party, complete with authentic drinks.

(The units of measure used in this recipe are those archaic English measurements that we still use in America. I would convert them to metric for you, but I don't want to be held accountable if somebody's butterbeer exploded due to too much or too little of this or that.)

Ingredients:
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter, at room temperature about 2 hours
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 pint vanilla ice cream, softened 30 minutes
1 (24-ounce) bottle (3 cups) sparkling apple cider

In a large bowl...

...cream together butter, sugar and spices. Add to ice cream...

...and refreeze. This took about an hour and a half, so we entertained ourselves in the meanwhile:

Pour out the appropriate amount of cider...

...and heat it in a pot over medium heat until warm but still carbonated (at least 3 minutes).

Fill each glass with a generous scoop of ice cream mixture. Pour warmed cider over ice cream; it will foam like beer, hence the name.

Got butterbeer?

Basically it tastes like what you think it tastes like: apple cider, vanilla ice cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Despite the name, it doesn't taste like butter. I don't know what beer tastes like.

It's an interesting blend of tastes hot and cold. Katherine thought hers was too hot, and my sister's thought hers was too cold. Mine tasted just right and I drank it up promptly. The recipe says it makes six servings, but we were basically able to split the batch up between us three.

You kind of have to like the sparkling apple cider in order to like this recipe. Otherwise it'll taste funky. It tasted kind of funky to me, but I could see why you'd go for it on a snowy day in Hogsmeade.

Now the ubiquitous cheesy smile shot:

See also these unrelated but cool pages with recipes for root beer and ginger ale.