My Lembas Recipe

When throwing a Middle Earth party, having lembas is pretty much a requirement. The much-lauded (except by Gollum) Elvish waybread is supposed to be very nutritious, enough to sustain a grown man of Minas Tirith for a day's labour. Dinner table discussion concluded that if that were truly the case, you might as well hand everyone a Tiger's Milk nutrition bar and be done with it. Unfortunately, lembas is also supposed to be tasty. Most of the recipes out there err on the side of tasty instead of sustaining, and while I don't think it's possible to make real lembas here in Ordinary Earth, I can at least try for something slightly more authentic. Because, you know, there needs to yet another lembas recipe out there on teh interwebs.

My lembas is more like Scottish shortbread than the thin cakes Tolkien describes, my reasoning being that the high butter content gives it the necessary calories for a day's worth of work. I also used almond meal along with flour in order to up the protein content without resorting to those nasty powders from the Vitamin Shoppe. Many of the extant lembas recipes I looked at also called for honey as a sweetener, the reasoning being that lembas is described only as being better than the Beornings' honey-cakes, and not that they necessarily use honey to make lembas. For that reason, I chose to stick to sugar. In the future, I may experiment with honey, though, as it really is better for you than sugar.

Recipe:

1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
0.5 cups sugar
2 tsp almond extract
1.5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup almond meal (I got mine at Trader Joe's, but you could throw frozen almonds into a food processor to make your own if you can't buy it at your grocery store)
0.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon

Cream together the butter, sugar, and almond extract. Try to get it as light and fluffy as you can. Fold in the flour, almond meal, baking powder, and cinnamon as best as you can, but you will eventually need to use your hands to really work all the ingredients together into a dough. Divide the dough into two portions, rolling each half into a log. Flatten the sides of the log so that they are kind of rectangular with rounded corners. Wrap the logs tightly in plastic wrap, chill for an hour, then cut into 3/8" slices. If so desired, use a butter knife to carve runes into the surface (I suggest the G tengwar for Galadriel). Bake for 25-30 minutes in a 300 degree oven, until the outside is a very light golden brown. I made about 30 pieces of lembas from this batch. They can be stored in an airtight container for several days.

I got tired of carving Gs into the surface very quickly, so I resorted to using tiny cookie cutters to make Bill the Pony/Fatty Lumpkin, Gollum's fish (because having a fish on top makes it slightly more palatable?), and Radagast's woodland critter friends instead. 

The cookies made from this recipe feel more substantial and not quite as dessert-y as a cookie normally is; the texture is similar to shortbread and they are crumbly and buttery and only a little sweet. The almond makes for a lovely aroma that seems appropriately mallorn-y. With the wealth of lembas recipes out there, I don't expect this one to surface in searches, but if you're reading this and just want a pleasant almond shortbread, you don't have to call it lembas if you don't want!

I still have one more LOTR/party-related post to go (but at least it's about sewing), and then I promise I'll be back to normal!

More or Less Fail-proof Banana Bread

It's been a crazy past month here in The City of Culver City, as my husband is really getting into the thick of things with business school. Not only does he have class, he's also section president, planning the health care career fair, and recruiting. It's hard for me not only because he's not home much, but also because I feel like I can't help with any of it. When I was swamped with Physical Science grading, he took over and corrected all my worksheets (what a stud!), but I know next to nothing about accounting and marketing and running section elections. So when he requested that I make banana bread for him, I was thrilled to be able to do something "helpful." If fattening him up so that he doesn't fit into his snazzy suits can be considered helpful.

Especially tasty with a bit of sour cream.

Now, this is not a baking blog, nor is it going to turn into one. But I really think this recipe is the bee's knees. What. Why did I just write that. I hate that phrase. How about...this recipe is the cat's spats. It's pretty much impossible to mess up; I've been making it for a decade and half and I've made it in all sorts of conditions: wide-awake and alert, distracted by talking to friends, and half-awake in the middle of the night in a quadrupled batch, and it still turns out fine every time. I tell inquirers that it's passed down from my mom, but here's the confession: since she's from Hong Kong where no one bakes anything, it's probably more accurate to say that I got it from a magazine clipping my mom happened to find.

Oddly enough, I hate bananas. My mom used to make me eat one every day after school so that I wouldn't get cramps during track practice...and you can guess how that went once I arrived at practice with a rock of a banana sitting in my stomach. Hence my hatred of bananas. But! But! I am in love with this banana bread. It's the only banana-related thing I'll eat. And you know what? A whole high school track team also loved this banana bread. Granted, high school athletes will probably eat anything and declare it good, but still.

See, when I first started teaching, I was only three or four years older than my students, and definitely looked it. I really wanted my students to like me. I also had no life outside of school, since I was new to the area and hadn't made any friends yet. So one night a week, I would make myself feel better by baking up a storm. This eventually turned into making cookies for my students every time they had a test...which then morphed, like a monster out of my control, into baking enough banana bread for the entire track team every time they had a meet. Hence the quadruple batch at 2 am.

Enough history of the recipe in my life; here it is.

Ingredients:

1. 1 stick softened butter (if you melt it in the microwave, that's fine too; just mix it in veeeery slowly while whisking so that the eggs don't cook)
2. 1 cup sugar
3. 2 eggs
4. 1 tsp vanilla extract
5. 1 tsp salt
6. 1/2 cup sour cream (don't use non-fat...it'll be weird)
7. 2 ripe bananas, mashed (easiest way to mash without mashing is to freeze and then thaw them: instant mush!)
8. 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
9. 1 tsp baking soda

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, or 176.7 degrees Celsius. Or 449.9 Kelvins. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together ingredients #1-7 until they are nicely blended. It should be yellow and very thick, but not too goopy. Then add ingredients #8-9 and stir gently (just the minimum necessary to get the batter smooth). At this point, you can add a couple handfuls of walnut pieces or chocolate chips (I prefer walnuts; the track team preferred the chips). Pour into a well-greased or parchment-papered loaf pan or 9" x 9" square baking dish. Bake for 45-60 minutes, depending on your oven. It's done when an inserted toothpick/bamboo skewer comes out clean.

I know a lot of baking recipes call for fiddly bits like doing dry and wet ingredients separately, or merely softening the butter instead of melting it, but honestly, I've made it both the "proper" way and the easy way, and it turns out just fine with the one-bowl, fast-melt cheater method. This recipe is pretty robust in that way. At the end is a perfectly cake-y, moist (sorry, no other word describes it as well), dense-ish, banana bread with a pronounced crumb that holds its shape and is good for a week. It can be stored in an air-tight container at room temp or in the fridge and holds up well to reheating.

Gratuitous picture of a sleeping Walnut. Yes, he really sleeps with one paw over his face. He's like a sulky teenager who doesn't want Mommy to take his picture, even in his sleep.