An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery (11 page)

If you’d like, you can whisk an egg with a tbsp of water for a glaze. Use a pastry brush to paint it on top of the pastry bites. Follow that up with a light dusting of extra sugar.

If you use whole raisins or currants, they have a tendency to rise to the top of the cookies. When baked, they’ll look like fruit exploded from the surface. While that’s kind of fun, it’s also hard to store effectively. You can get around that by properly mincing all your fruit. The sticky cut sides anchor to the pastry, helping the pieces stick in place.

Bake your plum heavies at 350F / 180C for 15-18 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown and crunchy. They’ll turn into a tough mess if refrigerated, so store them in a closed container (like a cookie jar) at room temperature for up to a week.

Forget those crunchy triangles you find at Starbucks. The Victorian scones of Tolkien's day were far more like southern style American biscuits.

Like American biscuits, these are best served fresh, hot, and buttered. Unlike their modern counterparts, they’re served at teatime, around 4 p.m., with clotted cream or home made raspberry jam instead of at breakfast, smothered in gravy.

The creamy interior bears little resemblance to the brick-like pastries masquerading under their name in coffee shops. You can throw together a batch in about half an hour. Try some for yourself and see if you don’t prefer your scones Shire-style.

2 ½ c / 500 g flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp sea salt

2 ½ tbsp sugar

¼ c / 60 g cold butter

1 c / 250 ml whole milk

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, sugar, and salt. Once they’re well mixed, add the butter. Use your fingers to work it into the flour in order to create crumbly edible gravel. The colder the butter, the better your scones.

Once the butter and flour are deliciously crumbly, moisten them up with the milk. Mix the dough until everything is barely combined, then lightly knead the dough a handful of times. You don’t want to overwork it.

Spread some flour on a clean work surface. While you’re at it, dust your hands. Use them to press the dough so it’s about 2 inches / 5 cm thick. Use a round or fluted round cookie cutter to punch out discs of tasty goodness. You usually see them about 3 inches / 7.5 cm across, but you can use whatever size cutters you own.

Arrange the scones 2 inches / 5 cm apart on a well greased baking sheet. Don’t be shy about the butter. This isn’t health food.

While you’re at it, melt a little extra butter and paint it on top of your scones. Now that the scones are sitting on a buttery surface and topped with buttery goodness, let them rest for about 5 minutes before baking.

Bake at 425F / 220C for 15-20 minutes, or until the tops are a delicious golden brown.

These are best served piping hot, straight from the oven, with a dab of clotted cream or fresh raspberry jam.

If you decide to take some along on an adventure, remember they won’t last more than a day without going horribly stale. Make sure to slather the exterior in butter before toasting day old scones for a light breakfast.

It’s hard to believe something so delicious only has four ingredients. The key to this simple recipe is to embrace your inner love of butter. If you use enough natural dairy goodness, the shortbreads will practically leap off the pan instead of clinging to it like a desperate lover. Save yourself some heartbreak by being generous with the fat.

1 c / 225 g butter

2 c / 260 g flour

½ c /100 g sugar

½ tsp salt

Cream your butter and sugar together until they’re completely smooth.

Shortbread is excellent on its own, but if you want to add in some extra flavoring agents, now is the time. Lavender and rosemary are perfectly Shire-appropriate additions. At most, add ½ tbsp of either.

Once you’ve stirred any extra flavors into your buttery goodness, whisk your salt into your flour. Dump the salty flour into your butter mixture. Keep mixing until the flour is completely integrated into the butter. The best method is to give up on the spoon and just reach in there with your hands. Once you have a nice, uniform dough, knead it a few times for good measure.

If you’ve added any flavoring agents, form the dough into a log, wrap it in plastic, and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours so the flavors can mingle. If you don’t plan to add any extras, you can either shape it into a log for easy cutting or go ahead and bake it now.

If you want to use a cookie cutter for fun shapes, let your dough come back to room temperature and roll it out to ½ inch / 1.25 cm thickness. If you’re not particular about shapes, rolling it into a log and simply slicing off coins certainly saves time. Either way, the shortbreads will taste great.

Arrange your shortbreads 1 inch / 2.5 cm apart on a heavily buttered glass cake pan. The extra butter makes them release even faster.

Bake at 325F / 160C for 18-20 minutes, or until the shortbreads turn a rich golden brown. Don’t over bake them or else they’ll turn a sickly grey-brown. To preserve the texture, store them in a room temperature an airtight container.

Rumor has it Queen Elizabeth I would give visiting dignitaries gold gilded gingerbread versions of themselves around the holidays. Whether or not this is true, crunchy gingersnaps date back to the crusades and were still hugely popular in Tolkien's day. The molasses that makes the cookies so distinctive not only used to be cheaper than sugar, but its strong flavor also helped cover up impurities in cheaper, coarser grinds of flour, making these a common country tea biscuit.

1 c / 225 g butter

3/4 c / 150 g sugar

1 1/4 c / 254 g molasses (black treacle)

1 egg

2 c / 250 g white flour

2 c / 260 g whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

zest and juice of 1 lemon

3 tbsp cinnamon

1 ½ tbsp ginger

½ tsp cloves

½ tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 350F / 180C.

Cream together the butter, sugar, molasses, and egg. Add the zest and juice of one lemon.

In another bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt.

Such delicious ingredients shouldn’t be kept apart. Mix the spicy flour blend into the creamy butter and keep stirring until the mix is free of lumps.

Generously lubricate a baking sheet with butter.

Roll 1 inch / 2.5 cm balls of dough between your hands. Arrange them 2 inches / 5 cm apart on the cookie sheet. Pierce the tops with a fork.

Bake at 350F / 180 C for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are dark brown.

Leave them on a rack to cool completely. Once cool, they should be crunchy all the way through. If kept in a dark, airtight container, they can stay crunchy and delicious for a couple of weeks, if the batch lasts that long.

Bannocks can mean anything from an uncut circle of scones to a fluffy fruit cake to these dense, wholesome, country oatcakes. While wealthy households might limit their tea time treats to pastries and delicate sandwiches made from fine white flour, hearty oat Bannocks were more of a working man’s alternative - something solid enough to tide you over until dinner but not so sweet or heavy it would ruin your appetite, with just enough spice to highlight a good cup of tea.

1 c /140 g whole wheat flour

3 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp salt

½ c / 100 g sugar

2 tbsp cinnamon

1 tbsp allspice

½ tbsp nutmeg

½ tbsp cloves

1 c / 85 g rolled oats

1 c / 240 ml whole fat milk or almond milk for vegans

butter for frying

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Make sure the baking powder is evenly distributed in the salt or else you’ll end up with unevenly cooked bannocks.

Now add the sugar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves. Mix in the sugar and spices until everything is well blended. Next add in the oats and give them a good mix.

Get it all wet by adding the milk. Stir it just enough to make the lumps disappear. You don’t need to over work this batter.

Heat a large cast iron skillet or griddle to a medium heat. You want to cook these low and slow to avoid burning. Smear the bottom with a generous coat of butter. Honestly, the easiest method is to just rub the stick across the surface of your hot pan.

Ladle in ¼ - ⅓ cup of batter. You can make larger bannocks, but for afternoon tea, the goal is to make small cakes no wider around than a saucer. You should be able to comfortably fit three at a time into a round skillet or four onto a square griddle.

Fry for 3-5 minutes per side, or until they’re a dark golden brown.

These are best served warm with a nice cup of milky tea. If you want to make them up in advance, you can reheat them without burning the surface by arranging a single layer on a lined baking sheet and popping them in a 400F / 205C oven for 5-6 minutes, or until warmed through but not yet overly crispy on the outside.

VEGAN VARIATION

If you’re entertaining travelers who don’t eat meat, simply substitute your favorite milk alternative (almond milk tastes particularly good in this context) and add 1 tsp vegetable oil to the batter to make up for the lost milk fat. Instead of butter, grease your pan with a swipe of vegetable oil. You’ll end up with a wholesome vegan tea time treat.