Happy Hobbit Day! Many Lord of the Rings fans celebrate September 22, which is Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, and I choose to celebrate in the most Hobbit-like way possible: making food! This year, I made some lembas to snack on (the way-bread that the elves gave Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship for their travels). There are lots of recipes for lembas online, but I wasn’t totally satisfied with any of them, so I decided to combine a few and make my own. Good lembas should be a light brown, dense wafer that’s good for travel and naturally sweet. I’m constantly tweaking recipes, but this is the best I’ve found so far.
The Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1/2 c butter
- 1/2 c applesauce
- 1/4 c honey
- 2 c flour
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- Beat together the butter, applesauce, and honey.
- Gradually stir in the flour until it’s evenly mixed.
- Lightly sprinkle flour over a flat surface and turn out your dough onto it. Knead the dough until it’s smooth, adding flour as necessary when it sticks. Roll it out to a rectangle about 1/4-inch thick. Cut the rectangle into 4-inch squares and cut each of these squares in half diagonally.
- Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray and put your triangles onto it. Bake them in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes, or until it starts to get firm and lightly browned.
Notes:
- When choosing your applesauce, you can either get it from the store or, if you want it to be natural like good elf food, you can make your own. The amount of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and other flavors you put in your applesauce can give your lembas some variety, but keep in mind that the applesauce is very diluted in the dough, so you might want to go heavier on the spices than usual. Also, make your applesauce very smooth, since chunks will alter the consistency of your dough.
- Lembas is traditionally wrapped in leaves, which I did for the picture above, but you can feel free to skip this step. If you want to go for the leaves but don’t know what might be toxic, you can find leaves in many grocery stores that are intended to wrap food.
- If you make lembas, make sure no creatures of evil steal your food and blame your best friend.
Coming Soon
Let me know in the comments below if you made your own lembas or if you want me to recreate more literary recipes in the future. In the meantime, I’ll get ready for October, which means Halloween and horror!
