3rd December 2012

Nerd Recipes: Lembas for Hungry Hobbits

Are you traveling this holiday season? Take a cue from The Lord of the Rings and make these lovely lembas. The magical bread baked in the elfen hearths of Middle Earth, were meant to sustain elves, hobbits and men for long journeys.

Just in time for the first Hobbit film coming to theaters, now you can bake lembas in your own kitchen.

If you want to go all out, snag a package of frozen banana leaves at the grocery store, defrost and dry them, and wrap around your lembas to keep them fresh for the midnight showing. (In other words… Maybe don’t wrap them in any old leaves… I’m not sure we have the same vegetation on normal earth as it does on Middle Earth.)

Enjoy!

For this lembas recipe, you need:

2 cups flour
2 TBS sugar + 2 TBS sugar, divided
1 TBS baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 ½ sticks butter
2 eggs
½ cup + ¼ cup half & half or whole milk divided
¼ cup plain Greek yogurt
zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Line a jelly roll pan or half-sheet pan with parchment paper and spray with butter spray.

Whisk together flour, 2 TBS sugar, baking powder, salt and one teaspoon of lemon zest and one teaspoon of orange zest. Cut butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. (You can do this in a food processor to save time)

Whisk together 1 egg, ½ cup half and half and yogurt.

Mix wet into dry slowly until a sticky dough forms. You may not need all of the wet ingredient mixture.

Press dough onto prepared sheet and form into a large rectangle, slightly less than an inch thick.

Whisk together remaining egg and milk, then brush pastries with egg wash.

Crumble sugar and citrus zest between your fingers until fully combined. Sprinkle over dough.

Run a knife through the dough to cut into 8 equally-sized rectangles.

Bake for 16 minutes at 400 degrees.

Cool completely before serving.

Emma Carew Grovum is a data journalist working at the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as the Digital Editor for The Cooking Club of America and blogs at kitchendreamer.blogspot.com Emma loves Star Wars, pandas and all things Joss Whedon. Find her on twitter at @emmacarew.

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3rd December 2012

Nerd Recipes: Lembas for Hungry Hobbits

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