Beorn’s Twice Baked Honey Cake | The Hobbit
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Beorn’s Twice Baked Honey Cake
Make your own version of Beorn’s twice-baked honey cakes from The Hobbit. Sturdy, honey-sweet biscuits made to last on a long journey.
What Are Honey Cakes?
Beorn’s cakes are described as twice-baked, nourishing and long-lasting, and containing honey. Tolkien doesn’t offer a detailed recipe, but we can infer a few things: the double baking suggests a dry, sturdy texture (like historical travel biscuits), and the inclusion of honey will impact the flavour.
Literary Context
These cakes appear in The Hobbit, when Beorn provides the Company with food for their trek through Mirkwood:
“This is what he promised to do for them. He would provide ponies for each of them, and a horse for Gandalf, for their journey to the forest, and he would lade them with food to last them for weeks with care, and packed so as to be as easy as possible to carry-nuts, flour, sealed jars of dried fruits, and red earthenware pots of honey, and twice-baked cakes that would keep good a long time, and on a little of which they could march far. The making of these was one of his secrets; but honey was in them, as in most of his foods, and they were good to eat, though they made one thirsty…”
– The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
Later, in The Fellowship of the Ring, Gimli gives high praise when comparing the taste of lembas:
“Indeed it is… better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings, and that is great praise, for the Beornings are the best bakers that I know of.”
Biscuits as TRavel Food
In Tolkien’s world, travel food is in a category of its own. Lembas, cram, and these twice-baked cakes were designed to provide sustenance over long distances.
Historically, “biscuit” comes from the Latin biscoctus—bis (“twice”) and coctus (“cooked”). Double baking removes moisture and extends shelf life, making the food lighter and more durable. Italian gallette and Scottish oatcakes were known for this quality and became my base inspiration.
But these are honey cakes. The inclusion of honey is not just for flavour so it acts as a natural preservative thanks to its high sugar content. The end result is a firm, slightly sweet biscuit that feels right at home in a Hobbit’s travel pack or on the table at a festive Hobbit Day feast.
The taste hierarchy is clear between the different travel biscuits: lembas reigns supreme, while the honey cakes, as eloquently put by Gimli, rise above the ordinary.
” `Indeed it is,’ said Gimli. ‘Why it is better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings, and that is great praise, for the Beornings are the best bakers that I know of…”
Twice Baked Honey Cake | The Hobbit
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups plain flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 tablespoon honey
- 2 large eggs
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Pre heat oven to 350F or 175C
- In one bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
- In the mixer, beat together the sugar, honey, eggs, butter, lemon zest and juice and vanilla extract.
- Bit by bit, add in the dry mixture of ingredients into the wet mixture.
- Once all combined, shape into squares. Use a butter knife to trim the edges for a cleaner look.
- Bake for 25 minutes, then remove and cool.
- Place back into the oven, reduce heat to 300F or 150C and bake for another 10 minutes each side.
- Remove from oven, transfer and cool.
These look scrumptious.
What a great blog concept! And a fabulous recipe idea. (Much better than the raw fish Gollum ate.)
Excellent article. I was looking for recipes for twice-baked bread and this one revealed my reason for searching for it, haha! I will definitely have to try a version of this.
And I will definitely look through your site more!
I’m about to try this recipe, but I noticed it doesn’t say how many squares to make. I’m going to try 12 and see how it goes.
It says it yields 8. How did it go with 12?
did middle earth have vanilla and lemons?
I’m really disappointed mine didn’t turn out as cute as yours did. 🙁
This totally made my day!
Great recipe! I ended up with 6 round cakes (personally liked them rounded), and could have made them smaller to make more. I served mine with cream and fresh cherries! I bet these would be great as a softer once-baked tea cake recipe too!
These are so delicious! Thank you for sharing your recipe; the perfect bake while watching An Unexpected Journey for the first time. I substituted the lemon zest and juice for fresh orange juice and orange zest. They turned out delicious. Can’t wait to try with lemon next time!
I made these but didn’t twice bake them and they are so good. Perfect snack or for breakfast.
While I haven’t tried them yet (hope to Sunday) I think my small alteration will be to brush some with honey after the bakes (some the first, some the second, some plain) see how they turn out :)
Do they freeze well?