“Riddikulus with Elise & Sydney” is a column about the Harry Potter series. A new column is posted every other Wednesday. Columns may contain spoilers.

Anyone who has read the Harry Potter series will be familiar with a drink called butterbeer. While the drink was originally a figment of author J. K. Rowling’s imagination, readers have since made the beverage a reality.

When The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened, the park began selling a version of the famous drink that had been taste-tested by Rowling herself.

After visiting the park and tasting this delicious creation, I (Elise) was determined to recreate it. So, Sydney and I got online and found a recipe that was created to duplicate the taste of the butterbeer served in the park. With our hopes high, we decided to attempt to make the drink ourselves.

We were successful.

The outcome tasted almost exactly like the drink served at the park. Even Sydney, who dislikes caramel, cream soda and butterscotch, thought it was delicious. So in this column installment we will be teaching you a very important life skill: how to make butterbeer.

To begin your beverage-concocting adventure, you will need:

1 cup light or dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons water
6 tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar
3/4 cup heavy cream, divided
3/4 teaspoon rum extract
6 12-ounce bottles cream soda

Begin by placing the water and brown sugar in a sauce pan. Heat until the mixture comes to a steady boil, but do not burn.

Then, stir in butter, salt, vinegar and 1/4 cup of the heavy cream. Allow mixture to cool to room temperature.

After the mixture has cooled, stir in the rum extract.

Before adding the cream soda, remove 2 tablespoons of the mixture to put into the whipped topping.

To make the whipped topping, combine the 2 tablespoons with the remaining 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Beat mixture until slightly thick, but stop before any peaks form.

Before you add the cream soda, divide the brown sugar mixture evenly among four tall glasses.

The next thing you need to do is to add the cream soda. Warning: when you add the cream soda, do it slowly, otherwise a nasty-looking foam will form. It will probably form anyway, but it is easily scooped off. Then, scoop the whipped topping onto the drinks.

Now, if you want your drinks to be extremely cold, which we recommend, place the barrel of an ice cream maker in the freezer about six hours before you make the drinks. Take it out and combine all of the brown sugar mixture and about five bottles of soda in the barrel.

You can either stir the mixture until it is deeply chilled or use the ice cream maker to create “slushies.” Either option is delicious. We do not recommend serving the beverage warm, as is done in the books, because it is very rich. We tried, and it was almost sickly. The chilled version, however, is delicious.

For the previous installment, read the March 23 article, Riddikulus with Elise & Sydney: What the epilogue leaves out.

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