My youngest daughter and I had watched Encanto several times. I always get the songs stuck in my head (Darn you, Lin Manuel Miranda and your catchy lyrics). My husband asked what song we had been singing and I realized it was time to introduce him and my teenager to Disney’s Encanto. Of course that meant it was time for another family movie night!
I love when movies already have food featured in them (like gumbo and beignets we did for our Princess and the Frog movie night!) I wanted to cook a full meal along with some treats for our Encanto movie night. The movie has magic food that can heal you in it, so I knew I had to include some Arepas con queso like Julieta makes in the film! Not to mention anything with bread or cheese is always a hit with my girls, so I knew Colombian cheese bread, would be right up their alley! I had never made Arepas before, so I searched the internet for a recipe with good reviews and gave it a shot! This Arepas Con Queso recipe from Savory Experiments, was easy to make and delicious!
The Arepas were more meal than treat, but I knew I needed a main entree if this was going to be dinner. My whole family loves the recipes I make often from Skinnytaste, and I knew I had seen several Columbian dishes that Gina has posted before. I just searched skinnytaste.com for Columbian to find an entree. I decided to make her Columbian Style Zucchini Rellenos which are based on the Columbian dish Pepino Rellenos. The flavor of these was fantastic, and my picky 6 year old ate them because they were from the movie. She normally isn’t so adventurous in what she will eat. 
I decided to wrap up the entree portion of the meal with some fried plantains. I’ve made Tostones, or Patacones as they are called in Columbia, lots of times before and they are always a hit with my family. If you need a recipe, My Columbian Recipes has a great tutorial on making twice fried plantains! I made a simple guacamole with avocados, cilantro, jalapeños, lime and salt to dip them in. 
With dinner covered, it was time to make some treats! I’d been singing about Bruno all week, so I knew I wanted to feature him in a snack! I decided to make Bruno’s vision cupcakes, with shattered green glass candy and sand, like Mirabel finds in Bruno’s room. The star of these cupcakes are the decorations on top, so feel free to use any cupcakes and frosting you would like. I went with my favorite devils food cake cupcakes and homemade buttercream. If you’d like the recipes I used, they can be found on my Hula Girl Doll Cake post. I prepared my candy glass first, and then baked the cupcakes while the candy glass cooled and hardened.
To make the candy glass, I used the same technique I use when making candy apples. In a tall pot I added:
3 cups of white sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 cup water
I stirred all ingredients together over high heat and inserted my Candy Thermometer and let the mixture boil until it reached 300 degrees (the hard crack stage).
Once the hard crack stage was reached I turned off the heat and added 1/2 tsp of green gel food coloring, if you want to flavor your candy glass, you can add a few drops of green apple extracts at this time, I didn’t add any additional flavor to mine and they tasted great and just sweet. I laid out a piece of parchment paper and sprayed it with a little non stick spray. I poured the bubbling green mixture in a thin layer over the parchment paper and let it sit while I baked the cupcakes, made the frosting, and prepared some edible sand.
To make edible sand I added 1 sleeve of Graham Crackers, a handful of vanilla wafers, 2 Oreos, 1 tablespoon brown sugar and 1/4 tsp of sea salt to my food processor and pulsed until I had a fine sandy powder. Using the variety of ingredients adds some dimension to the sand and looks natural with different colored grains. It also tastes great!
After the cupcakes were baked and frosted and decorations were prepped, I peeled the candy glass from the parchment paper and broke it into shards of various sizes. I pressed the shards into the frosting (I used 2-4 large shards on each cupcake along with a handful of smaller shards), and then sprinkled the edible sand on the frosting.
We pulled the larger shards off and ate them on their own, but the smaller shards were delicious in the frosting!
I wanted to make 1 more sweet treat to enjoy during the movie, and kept thinking about all the flowers Isabella makes. For my final treat, I decided to make Isabella’s flowers with pretzels, pastel M&Ms and white melting wafers.
These flowers were quick and easy to make! I placed square pretzels on a cookie sheet with a Silicone Baking Mat and then placed 1 white chocolate melting wafer on each pretzel. I baked at 275 degrees for 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, I removed the tray from the oven and quickly pressed pastel M&Ms into the melted white chocolate in a flower shape. I used 1 color in the center with 6 M&Ms of a different color in a circle around the center M&M.
I let the flowers cool and harden on the baking sheet for 20 minutes and then put all the flowers on a plate.
I now had dinner cooked, and sweet treats made. What’s movie night without popcorn? We have a Movie Theater Popcorn Machine and use the Great Northern Portioned Popcorn Packs that already have the right amount of salt, oil and kernels measured out. We use it for all of our movie nights.
While popcorn always works for a movie night, I decided it would be cute to make popcorn cups that looked like the magic candle from the movie! I started with a plastic solo cup, wrapped a piece of yellow cardstock around the cup and taped it into a cylinder. I just looked up some pictures of the candle in the movie and used a sharpie to draw a similar design on the cardstock cylinder. I’m not much of an artist, so forgive my basic drawing! I filled the cylinder with popcorn, the cup inside kept the popcorn from spilling out the bottom.
The final detail to plan for movie night was a special drink. I went back to the song I’d been singing all week for inspiration (We don’t talk about Bruno). The song has a line about Aunt Pepa getting married in a hurricane, so I decided to make married in a hurricane mocktails for the kids and hurricane cocktails for Mom and Dad!
I made a pitcher of hurricane mix with:
3 cups of passion fruit juice
1.5 cups orange juice
1.5 cups pineapple juice
1/2 cup lime juice
3/4 cups of super fine sugar
3/4 cups of grenadine
For the kids drinks I filled a glass with ice, filled the glass 3/4 of the way with the juice mixture and then added sprite. For the adults I filled a glass halfway with the juice mixture and then added equal parts dark and light rum. I added orange wedges and a few maraschino cherries as a garnish.
We had so much fun watching and singing along to Encanto with our snacks!
Join us for our next movie night soon! Comment below and let us know what movie we should watch next!
**I have included affiliate links to the products I used and can receive a small commission if a purchase is made after you click on a link in this tutorial. All items used in this tutorial were purchased by me and I did not receive anything in exchange.
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