Elevenses! A Fun Feast for Quarantined Geeks (and Their Children)

Here is a list of things kids love: baked goods, themed meals, costumes, indoor picnics, any meal referred to as a feast. A comment on an article I read about stress baking last week got me thinking about Hobbit food, and since Nico and I read The Hobbit a little while back, I thought a Hobbit-style feast would be super fun on yet another cooped-up day, especially this kind of grey day with the threat of rain. There are myriad resources for Middle-Earth cooking on the web (so many lembas bread recipes!), and there is even this amazing cookbook that I will definitely check out of the library come September or whenever this nightmare is over, but It may take some searching to find recipes that match up with the ingredients you have on hand. I also halved or quartered most of the recipes to prevent waste, especially since we were trying most of them for the first time, and you never know how that is going to go over with kids.

We made this almond honey cake, because Beorn serves Thorin’s company honey cake, and because I thought the combination of orange zest and spice would be delicious. It was good, the texture was super moist and crumbly, but the glaze made it too sweet for me. I wish I had kicked up the ginger a notch. This was Finn’s absolute favorite though, and he had an absolute blast helping me make it. I did quarter this recipe, then baked it in two buttered and floured mini cocottes for about twenty minutes.

We also made these Scottish oatcakes, because I very much associate oatcakes with anything elf-related. I topped them with these weird canned strawberries and some whipped cream I had on hand. I did not half this recipe, but I wish I had because even though they had fun rolling out and cutting the dough, neither of my kids would touch them. I thought they were pretty good though. I did substitute butter for the margarine the recipe calls for. If you don’t have buttermilk (which, it’s just kind of a weird fluke that I did), add about a teaspoon of vinegar to a quarter cup of milk and let it sit for about ten minutes before you add it to the dough.

I also made three quiche in 6-inch tart pans. I sort of winged the recipe, but I used 3/4 cups flour, 5 tablespoons butter, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and two tablespoons of iced water for the pastry, and two slices of crumbled bacon, two green onions, a bit of cheese, three eggs, and some milk for the filling. Nico absolutely devoured the quiches, which was was good, because it’s healthier than the cakes, but I was a bit bummed not to have any leftovers.

Lastly, I saw a lot of mentions of hash, often with mushrooms and leeks, in the lists of Hobbit foods I found online, so I threw together a quick hash with one potato, a couple breakfast sausages, two mushrooms, and green onions instead of leeks. Just chop everything up and bang it around in a frying pan with some oil and salt and pepper until it’s ready. Easy and delicious.

Don’t forget a fancy beverage. Hobbits love their ale, so I would suggest ginger ale or root beer, but anything apple cidery would be great as well.

While I got the table ready and queued up The Fellowship of the Ring (so many Hobbit food scenes near the beginning!), I gave Nico the task of costuming his brother. The results were a little different than I expected (my husband asked if the theme was 90s boy band), and things got a little touchy when Finn wanted to wear a stormtrooper helmet, but in the end we had a great time, and I’m already thinking of other themed feasts. Harry Potter seems obvious, but this idea seems adaptable to anything your kids are into.