Crabbe and Goyle’s Polyjuice Cupcakes

It’s September 1, and that means the Hogwarts Express is taking students to the start of their Hogwarts school year! I’m a really big Harry Potter fan (as you’ve probably realized in past posts), so I wanted to do a couple of Harry Potter related posts in honor of it – especially since I didn’t get a chance to post on Harry Potter’s birthday. (tear)

These cupcakes were inspired by the ones Crabbe and Goyle ate in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that were laced with Polyjuice Potion. Those cupcakes looked really good, and I haven’t really seen a recipe to try to recreate them – so I attempted!

The cakes didn’t turn out as sturdy as those ones, but that’s because I was using a moist yellow cake recipe – which by the way is AMAZING. It is now going to be my go to yellow cake recipe! Since I combined a couple of recipes, I’ll link them in my brief explanation of how I made these cupcakes.

First, I simply baked cupcakes out of this MOIST YELLOW CAKE RECIPE. I halved the ingredients, so it bakes about 8-12 cupcakes. I also used a low fat butter substitute which had salt in it so I didn’t add extra salt to the recipe (it equated to a little less than the sodium amount, so it was better for me). I filled the cups almost to the top since I didn’t want them to create a muffin top. I recommend either buttering your pan heavily so they don’t crumble when you try to take them out (which happened to me the first time I made these) or get cupcake liners. I ended up using liners in the end but I didn’t want those indentations, lol.

Anyway, while the cupcakes were cooling down, I made the PASTRY CREAM filling that’s in the middle of the cupcakes. The only substitution I made was using vanilla extract instead of vanilla bean, and the recipe demonstrates where to put that in instead. The first one I made (from a bad recipe), curdled and tasted gross, so this was one is way better! I would probably add more sugar maybe or vanilla to make it sweeter. I picked it because I liked it’s glossy appearance and custard-like texture, which looks similar to those cupcakes.

Once the cupcakes have cooled down, cut them in half. This part only proved tricky because these cakes were really soft – but you don’t necessarily have to use this cake recipe! Then on the bottom halves, I put a generous spoonful of the pastry cream and sandwiched the top half on it. After that, I put a big dollop of Nutella for the chocolate that is on top of those cupcakes. And that’s it!

These were pretty tasty. The cake was really light and fluffy and the pastry cream wasn’t heavy either. The Nutella provides extra flavor and sweetness and it really adds to it with the chocolate and hazelnut flavors.

I could see why Crabbe and Goyle would be enticed by cupcakes like these, tbh.