Lembas

In recent weeks, I have received several independent requests for a Lembas recipe, and I have to thank those of you who reached out and gave me the nudges I needed to finally get this recipe up on the blog.

You might think to yourself, “Huh, it’s super weird that there aren’t more LotR recipes on this super awesome fictional food blog!” Well, there’s actually a reason for that. Years and years ago, after Feast of Ice and Fire was newly published, I actually made a lot of LotR foods, mostly as proof of concept for a LotR cookbook pitch. Unfortunately, that attempt didn’t go anywhere, so I decided to self-publish what I had in the form of the Shire Cookbook. It was well received by the few folks who found it online, but I’ve since taken it down as part of an effort to try for an official cookbook again. It’s such a great fit for what I do, and how I do it, and the fanbase would LOVE to have it. Cross your fingers!

In the meantime, I’ll be uploading a few of my favorite recipes from that collection to the blog. And what could be a more perfect start to that than Lembas? For this recipe, I considered a number of things when building the ingredients list. First off, the practicality of this needing to be a pretty durable high calorie travel food. Thus the inclusion of some tasty fat in the form of butter, healthy sweetener from honey, and awesome flours. We don’t know what spiffy magic things the elves include in their lembas, so I decided to have a little fun with mine, including some elderflower as a play on “eldar” and some thyme because elves are so long-lived. The result, I hope, is something comforting and familiar, with just enough otherness to keep it interesting.

And that is PLENTY enough words on my end. :) I just hate when you have to scroll through half a novel just to get to the good part, The Recipe:

Lembas Bread Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1-2 tsp. freshly minced thyme
• 2 tsp. dried elderflower
• 1 cup oat flour
• 1/2 cup nut flour (chestnut, hazelnut, acorn, or almond)
• 1/4 cup hot water
• large leaves for wrapping
• twine

Preheat the oven to 300F and set out a sheet of parchment paper.

Beat the butter and honey together in a medium bowl until light and fluffy. Add in the thyme and elderflower, then gradually work in all the flour, adding just a little water at a time if necessary. You should end up with a fairly stiff dough that can nonetheless be rolled out. Roll out the dough on top of the sheet of parchment paper to somewhere around 1/2-inch thick. Move the dough and paper over to a baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes, until the lembas is just starting to turn golden. Remove from the oven and cut into small squares while still warm.

To prepare your lembas for travel, wrap each square in a leave and tie off with twine. Many types of leaves work well for this task, but if you are lucky enough to live somewhere with Sassafras trees, I found that their leaves are the best substitute in shape and size for those of the mallorn.