By Fan Request: The Lord of the Rings ‘Lembas Bread’

While in the midst of my trials and tribulations with the Senzu Beans I was contacted by reader (and coworker!) Katie L. from Cincinnati, Ohio. She came upon a recipe for Lembas Bread from LOTR in one of her feeds and thought it would be awesome if I made it. I couldn’t have agreed more and set to work on the post she sent:

I have no idea where this came from. Dear reader, if this is your recipe please contact me so that I may give you proper credit.

This is another one of those easy-peasy recipes as long as you know how to use measuring cups and spoons. The recipe calls for an electric hand mixer but if you don’t have one your bread won’t suffer for it.

Ready? Let’s go.

Gamers, grab your mats:

• 2 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. honey
• 2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

For the Mallorn Leaf wrap:

• craft leaves (I found a package of one sided parchment leaves from an offbeat sort of back alley thrift store for $2.50, you can probably find these at a craft store such as Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc.
• cooking twine
• Scotch tape (optional)

Lookit, I bought a rolling pin! That’s right, a real live legitimate cooking tool!

Start by preheating your oven to 425 degrees F.

Mix your flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl (if you don’t have a hand mixer and are using spoons/hands, a medium bowl will suffice).

Add your butter and mix until you get fine granules. For those of you without a hand mixer, I cut my stick of butter into a great many (read: I have no idea) thin slices and used my fingers to incorporate the butter into the flour mixture. Not too bad.

Non-Tool Users: Once the butter is fully incorporated, give it a stir with your wooden spoon. Juuuuuust in case.

Next, add your brown sugar and cinnamon and stir in with a wooden spoon.

Towards the end, the original recipe notes that you can use additional seasonings and spices to kick up the flavor in the bread: I used an extra teaspoon of cinnamon. Because, cinnamon.

Mix in your wet ingredients (honey, heavy whipping cream, vanilla extract) with a fork until your mixture turns into a thick dough. For the most part, I found the fork useless. Take off your hand jewelry and get to mixing. A little flour up to the elbows never killed anyone.

Not bad for no tools, I suppose.

This is about time I tossed the fork aside in favor of kneading the dough together with my hands.

Yeah, screw the fork. You will need to use your hands to make yourself a nice dough ball anyway:

And it’s just happy to see you!

Here’s where you need to use a tool: Whip out your rolling pin and roll your dough out to 1/2″ thickness, give or take. Confession: I’m an artist, not an engineer. I cannot measure to save my life. I was satisfied with an even thickness, but I think mine came out a little thinner. Cut out 3-inch squares and put your finished squares on a cookie sheet. Apparently I don’t own one of these, but I do have a sheet pan!

Did I mention I can’t measure? I can’t measure.

Criss-cross each dough from corner to corner with a knife, LIGHTLY. Do not cut through your square! I experimented and used the back side of the knife as well as the cutting edge; the cutting edge requires a light hand but is by far the superior option.

Pre-baking. My dough yielded 6 squares and the extras you see on the side.

Bake your Lembas Bread in the oven for about 12 minutes or until the dough is set and golden in color. Mine must have been on the large side because I needed about 15 minutes in the oven.

In all its baked glory? Neo thought they looked pretty good.

Let your bread cool before going on to the wrapping stage. Here’s my setup:

My parchment leaves came in three sections: top, middle, and bottom with stem. Yay weird thrift store finds?

This took some trial and error to get just right, but I ended up using just the tops and bottoms and wrapped the bread present-style and tied it off with cooking twine. Your wrapping style will be purely your own as you find what does and doesn’t work for you.

Once all the bread was wrapped up, I took one of the breads to work this morning for a special recipient: Katie L.!

Everyone, say hi to Katie! She works 3rd shift on my team.

According to Katie, the Lembas Bread tasted like graham cracker and was very good. I personally think it tastes like  animal cracker. In any case, it’s a nice, dry, crumbly bread that’s best eaten at room temperature. It’s easy to make and easy to eat. Plus, since it can easily be broken into four triangles, it’s perfect for sharing!

This is one of those recipes that’s perfect for your ‘little helpers’ in the kitchen, too. If I were to make this again (and I probably will), I would keep the original 1 tsp. cinnamon, add 1 tsp cinnamon sugar, and up the honey to as much as 2 tsp. total. I guess I was looking for a sweeter bread, but for what it’s supposed to be, I think it’s completely accurate.

Due to continued difficulties with the Senzu Bean Jelly Beans, that recipe is being put in indefinite hiatus until I level up a few more times. Will explain more on Saturday:

Up next: WILDCARD! It could be anything! Currently I’m vacillating between two very different recipes. Whichever one wins out, you can bet it will be a keeper!

Cheers,

Leisel