FoodHarry Potter

Trying Recipes from Harry Potter: Lemon Drops

I know I said I was going to make 7 Harry Potter recipes for this series. Because 7 is THE magical Harry Potter number.

But then someone suggested I should make lemon drops and I couldn’t refuse! How could I end this series without Dumbledore’s favorite candy?

Luckily, The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook had an easy recipe to make lemon drops.

So here comes the eighth one! (Oh, I wish the Harry Potter series also had an eighth book. So sad that there’s not an eighth book!).

Would you care for a lemon drop?”
“A what?”
“A lemon drop. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather fond of. 

Albus Dumbledore to Minerva McGonagall. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Ingredients: (makes about 40 candies)*

  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup light corn syrup
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 1 teaspoon lemon extract

Substitutions I made:

  1. I didn’t use cream of tartar or lemon extract since I couldn’t find them.
  2. I added the zest of 2 lemons
  3. 1 tablespoon lemon juice

*From The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dinah Buchholz ©2010 Adams Media. 

Instructions:

Since I couldn’t find two of the ingredients for this recipe (blame my poorly stocked local market), I did my best to find good substitutes. Most cooking websites said that you could leave the cream of tartar out, especially if your recipe includes lemon juice. And instead of the lemon extract I used a combination of lemon zest and juice.

To cook it I just added all the ingredients but the lemon to a saucepan. And stirred the mixture over medium heat. Since I don’t have a candy thermometer I just kept cooking it until it was super bubbly, like a can of soda that was shaken before opening (Don’t laugh! That’s actually how it looked like).

When the mixture was super bubbly I took it out of the fire and added the lemon zest + juice. Then I waited a bit until the bubbles disappeared. After that I just took spoonfuls of the mixture and dropped it into a baking dish. I tried to drop it in the shape of little lemons but it was so difficult!

And since I couldn’t make them all look like lemons, when they got cold I rolled the drops into little egg-shaped thingies. I also put them over a bed of confectioner’s sugar so they wouldn’t stick to each other. Warning: Make sure you have someone to stop you from eating a lot of these. That would be too much sugar.

And ta-da! Sugary lemon drops just as Dumbledore likes them! I can see why he would be a fan, they’re sweet but also have that delicious lemony flavor! They remind me a lot of honey lemon cough drops, but sweeter.

I’m still not sure if the consistency is the right one, since I never had lemon drops before. But they’re really sticky and soft. Kind of like hot glue from a glue gun!

I liked them, haha. They only downside is that they started melting because it was a really hot day yesterday, so after a couple of hours they looked like when I first dropped them on the baking dish.

Still, it was a fun experience making candy and I’ll keep practicing so I can give candy as gifts on Valentine’s Day.

What do you guys think? Let me know if you decide to make some lemon drops! Especially if you can find the lemon extract! If you post pictures of your recipes, I would love to see them  on Instagram ?

Other Wizarding World recipes:

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