Treacle

IT'S JULY.

If you're not as excited about this as I am, clearly you don't know what JULY signifies each and every year.

JULY is the month when NEW Harry Potter books come out!!!!!

ISN'T THAT SO EXCITING?

(Right now you may be saying, "But Awkward Mormon Girl, there haven't been any new Harry Potter books for six years. There haven't even been any new movies for two..."

If you are saying that, I am not even listening. Because Harry Potter is forever. Because Harry Potter is MAGIC. And so, forevermore, is JULY.

Got that, bub?)

Oh, the joys of those book debuts and movie premieres. Oh, the costumes I wore. Oh, the hours I waited outside bookstores and theatres. Oh, the special wizarding food I tried and failed to make.

Okay, well, that only happened once.

BFF Viola and I were very excited for the debut of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We decided that we would go to Barnes and Noble and wait in the midnight lines to get our very own, very new copies. Of course if we were going to do that, we had to have a big party first. A big party meaning that we would have a two-person but very exciting bash at Viola's house before our departure for Barnes and Noble by Floo powder by Portkey by car.

This party took, I kid you not, weeks to plan. Among the activity options: writing letters to J. K. Rowling, sending away for signed photos from Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, making wands from sticks, creating our very own fanfiction, and predicting the plot twists of the new book. We dressed up in matching blue high school graduation robes aka our costumes for Luna Lovegood and Padma Patil. Quite confident in the depths of our fanaticism, Viola and I moved on to the crowning moment of our celebration: the refreshments.

The refreshments chosen for this very special JULY evening were homemade butterbeer and chocolate treacle.

"What's butterbeer?" you may ask.

To which I say, "Read Harry Potter."

"But what's treacle?" you may ask.

To which I say, "You know, it's very unclear."

Ever since I became a British book fanatic at the tender age of eight, I have been utterly bemused by treacle. Treacle appears in most British books, at least most of the ones I read, yet it's never described to the satisfaction of a small American girl. Sometimes it 's described as being something like a taffy. Sometimes it's described like a pudding. Sometimes it's described much like some kind of soft pastry--a brownie, perhaps.

Because of this, I was very confused as to treacle's nature and more than a little eager to try it. So when Viola said that she had an internet recipe for some chocolate treacle, I of course jumped at the chance to both find out what it was and consume it.

We assembled the ingredients in Viola's kitchen. What did Viola's kitchen look like? Much like any kitchen. There were lots of appliances. Some counters. A dining area housing a long table with bench seats. A sliding glass window, a wall her family later tore down but which, when it existed, had a couch squished against it, and a small TV that could be watched from just about any vantage point in the room.

(The way the kitchen looked has no bearing on the following events. It's just that my creative writing teachers always complain that I never describe the scenery of my stories and that the characters might as well be floating in outer space. To keep any reader from being misled to think that Viola and I were making treacle in outer space, I have provided you with a most thorough description of her kitchen. You're welcome.)

The first thing to be added to the treacle pot was packed brown sugar. There wasn't quite enough in the cup, but that was all right. Who needed brown sugar, anyways? Not Viola. Not me.

Viola scanned the recipe. "Okay...we need molasses..."

"Oooh, I've always wanted to try molasses!" I cried.

Before we added it to the bowl, I tasted a little.

"It tastes like horehound," I said thoughtfully.

"It smells disgusting," Viola gagged.

She turned back to the recipe. "We need butter...yuck, that's a lot of butter. People don't need to eat that much butter! We'll only put in half..."

Viola scraped an unmeasured amount of butter into the bowl. "Now salt!" She grabbed the saltshaker and shook some into the mixture.

I scanned the recipe, trying to find some other exotic thing I could taste. "Hey...it calls for unsweetened chocolate. I've always wanted to try unsweetened chocolate. Too bad we only have eight squares...there won't be any left over."

"We can just add six. I'm sure it won't make much of a difference," Viola said.

"Yeah, it probably won't," I agreed readily.

We each took a square of unsweetened chocolate and placed it in our mouths.

"It's tasteless!" I gagged.

"No...it tastes like plastic!"

We ran for the garbage can.

Having fully recovered a few minutes later, we put the pot on a stove. The brown sugar, molasses, butter, salt, and unsweetened chocolate slowly melted. Preferably it would have mixed together as it melted. I mean, that's usually what would happen. It's the naturalthing to happen. However, Viola and I had cooking skillz so incredible they ruined nature. Our presence did the opposite of inspiring ingredients to fuse.

After much coaxing, we had a runny mix with lumps of butter and unmelted chocolate throughout. Using a metal spoon, we tried to chop the chocolate up so it would melt more easily.

"I don't think it's thick enough," Viola said with concern partway through the chocolate-chopping mission. She ran to the next room to ask her mother how to thicken a recipe.

"Salt," her mother said. Into the pot an extra heaping of salt went.

Finally, we deemed the treacle to be the proper consistency, or close enough. We laid it out to set, and then when it didn't set, we stuck it in the freezer.

About an hour later Viola took the treacle out and cut it into cute little squares. We sat at the long kitchen table with the bench seats and each bit into our half-frozen, poorly-mixed, treacle full of salt and unmelted, unsweetened chunks of chocolate.

For about ten seconds we pretended the treacle was delicious. That failing quickly, we then pretended it was tolerable for two minutes. At two and a half minutes our cute squares of treacle were lying at the bottom of the trashcan. So was the rest of the batch. So was the recipe.

Alas, I still never have tasted treacle. It's on my to-do list before I die, but if I meet a tragic and untimely end before I taste treacle/actually find out what it is, feel free to, like, stick some in my coffin or something.

As for the butterbeer, we did make that correctly. The recipe called for ginger ale, butter, and butterscotch syrup heated and mixed together. I don't know whose idea that was, but it was a terrible one.