Harry Potter Food and Themed Lunch

Today I'm sharing some fun Harry Potter themed food ideas that I had a lot of fun creating! Whilst I pulled them together to make a themed bento lunch for Small Child, I think they would also work well as party food for a Harry Potter party. 

I'm pretty sure this is the first of many Harry Potter themed lunches I'll be making - Small Child is really enjoying the Harry Potter books at the moment, although we're just sticking to the first few books until he gets a little older.

First up are some edible broomsticks.  Made from bread sticks and a piece of tortilla wrap, these would be great for sweeping up some yummy dip or healthy houmous!  This was the first element of the lunch that I made, and Small Child instantly worked out what the theme of the lunch was to be - there was great excitement and a yell of 'Nimbus 2000!' from him as he worked it out!

To make, first snap a bread stick in half.  I used sesame seed bread sticks, but plain or any other flavour would also work. Cut a strip from a tortilla wrap.  Using a sharp knife or kitchen scissors, make cuts along the length of the tortilla strip. Take a breadstick half, and with the broken end down, tightly wrap the tortilla strip around it.

Continue rolling until you have a decent sized broom head.  You may need to trim the strip down if it's too long.  Tie the tortilla onto the bread stick using a fruit string or liquorish string.  You'll need to pull it quite tight to make sure it stays put.  Cut the fruit string with a sharp knife or scissors, and trim the ends so you have a neat knot.  Repeat until you have as many broomsticks as you need!

Next up is a Babybel Owl! You may have spotted this in my recent Gruffalo themed lunch, I was really pleased with it and thought it would work equally well for a Harry Potter theme.  It's quite simple to make, definitely easier than it looks anyway!

To make, first gather your supplies.  You'll need mini babybel cheeses, two sizes of mini circle cutters and some edible eyes.  You can find my tutorial for DIY icing eyes here, or buy them from Amazon UK here.

Start by taking the outer wrapper off the Babybel.  With the larger of your circle cutters, cut a semi-circle from the top of the cheese.  You'll want to make sure that the strip for peeling the cheese is going horizontally across it, or the cutter won't work.  Peel the wax from the spare piece of cheese, taking care to keep it one piece. With the same circle cutter, cut half way across the piece of wax to make a wing.

Repeat on the other side of the wax, so that you have two wings. Next, use your smaller circle cutter to cut a disk from the wax to make a tummy, and remove (use the tip of the knife to help lift the wax away if necessary). Cut a triangle from the spare wax for the beak.  Assemble the owl by pressing the wings and beak onto the Babybel - they should stick by themselves.  Add a couple of edible eyes, sticking on with a little cream cheese, honey, peanut butter or houmous (whatever you have at hand).

Last up are my wizard's hat sandwiches.  You may have spotted this one in my Fun Halloween sandwich post, but I'll share it again here as it is also great for a Harry Potter theme! I used my nesting circle cutters for this sandwich, they are handy for so many different projects!

To make, first create the base of the hat by cutting two circles of bread and filling to make a sandwich. Don’t use the largest circle cutter for the base, use the next size down, or the base of the hat will be out of proportion to the point.

Next, make the point of the hat.  To do this, take a piece of tortilla wrap, and using your largest cutter, cut out a circle from it.  Slice it into two, making one piece slightly bigger than the other (see below).  Take the bigger piece, and with the flat edge at the top, bend the two corners towards each other. Pull together tightly to make a cone, stick the overlapping pieces together with peanut butter or another edible ‘glue’ (mayo, houmous, honey or cream cheese all work well) and pop on top of your round sandwich to turn it into a hat.

I decorated the hat above with a piece of a Bear yoyo (dried fruit strip) which I also glued on with peanut butter, and scattered over star shaped sprinkles.  I think mini versions of this sandwich would work really well for Harry Potter themed party food!

Last but not least, here is Small Child's Harry Potter themed lunch!  In this lunch (packed in our Yumbox Panino) he had a wizards hat sandwich, made on granary bread, filled with ham and houmous and decorated with the leftover fruit string, his edible broomstick and a Babybel owl.  On the side he had strips of raw yellow pepper and sugar snap peas decorated with tiny stars cut from carrot and an apple, which I cored, sliced and dipped in orange juice to prevent browning, and decorated with a black cat cupcake pick.  I finished the lunch off with some dried mix fruit in the dip well, which I topped with H and P alphabet picks.  By chance my alphabet picks matched the Gryffindor house colours!

Small Child was absolutely delighted with his Harry Potter lunch - I have no doubt I'll be packing many more on this theme in the future!

Grace

Some of the items used to make this lunch: