I was initially hesitant to call this Beorn’s Honey Cake at first; because, as you can see, I baked it in a loaf pan. And then when I was re-reading the recipe preparing to post it, I saw that this is, in fact, meant to be baked in a cake pan, not a loaf pan.
Luckily it has still turned out great everytime.
This is actually the dessert I baked last September 21st, for Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday. It is soooo yummy. I like it with butter, and it’s even delicious with extra honey on top.
P.S. Hi new followers! (waves dramatically) I love you already.
Beorn’s Honey Cake
Ingredients
6 tablespoons / 90 g butter 6 tablespoons / 90 mL honey ½ teaspoon / 2.5 mL vanilla extract 2 eggs 1 cup / 120 g flour 1 tsp / 4 g baking powder 2 tbs / 30 mL warm milk ¼ tsp / 1 g salt ¼ tsp / 1 g nutmeg
Directions
Cream the butter and honey together. Add vanilla. Beat in the eggs. Sift in the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Fold in the warm milk. Pour into a greased and lined pan (use a bread pan or a round cake pan; line with foil or parchment paper). Smooth the top.
Bake at 350 degrees F. for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
Let sit for 10 minutes, then loosen and turn out onto serving plate. Brush with 1 tablespoon warm honey. Serve warm or cooled.
I saw an excellent peasant bread recipe a while back and got all excited to try it, and then I saw this one somewhere too, and I left it open in a tab on my phone for literally months, and then I closed it. But I remembered the name of it because I saw it every time I opened a new Chrome tab on my phone. If you’re the person who posted a link to it, thank you! But I don’t remember why I had it open in a tab.
Anyway, I tried this recipe finally. Here’s the thing: I hate kneading bread. I mean, I like it, but i hate getting stuff on my hands, I had eczema between my fingers for like, a formative decade, so I just don’t get my hands wet much if I can help it, and, anyway. The point of this recipe, and what made it work for me, is that you literally never touch the dough with your hands. Not even to shape the loaves; they bake in bowls.
The version of this recipe on my phone was one of those ones with a blog entry beforehand where she waxes rhapsodic about vintage Pyrex, and goes on and on about which size bowl you gotta use.
I don’t have vintage Pyrex. I have two 1.5-quart Pyrex-ish casserole dishes.
I made this in those. It worked fine.
And here, the true acid test: I left the recipe scribbled on a piece of paper (I never can cook straight off the phone or computer, I always hand-write recipes) and said offhand to Dude that we could have more of that great bread, and he successfully made this recipe from my abbreviated-to-fuck recipe with no notes. It was a little underdone but that’s not his fault. (Except that he didn’t realize it would take two hours, which ok my handwriting’s bad but if he read the whole recipe or paid attention the whole time I was making it while he was in the room, he’d know that. So he started at like, 6pm. Don’t do that.)
So anyway. Here’s my rec. Casserole dishes work fine if they’re smallish.
I bet… *whispers* I bet you could do this in a loaf pan. Is that blasphemy? I bet you could. I have loaf pans, I might use them next time.
fucked up how cooking and baking from scratch is viewed as a luxury…..like baking a loaf of bread or whatever is seen as something that only people with money/time can do. I’m not sure why capitalism decided to sell us the idea that we can’t make our own damn food bc it’s a special expensive thing that’s exclusive to wealthy retirees but it’s stupid as hell and it makes me angry
bread takes like max 4 ingredients counting water and sure it takes a couple hours but 80% of that is just waiting around while it does the thing and you can do other things while it’s rising/baking
plus im not gonna say baking cured my depression bc it didn’t but man is it hard to feel down when you’re eating slices of fresh bread you just made yourself. feels like everything’s gonna be a little more ok than you thought. it’s good.
bread is amazing and it’s also been sold to us as something really hard to make? Every time I tell someone I made a loaf of bread I get reactions like “you made it yourself???” and “do you have a bread machine then?” I haven’t touched a bread machine in probably 10 years. You CAN make your own bread, folks, and it’s actually pretty cheap to do so. I believe the most expensive thing I needed for it was the jar of yeast. It was about $6 at the grocery store and lasted me MONTHS (just keep it in the fridge.) The packets are even cheaper. destroy capitalism. bake your own bread.
You can also make your own yeast by making a sourdough starter, so that cuts cost even more.
But you have to feed the starter daily/weekly and that means it grows quickly, but there are tons of recipes online for what to do with your excess starter. Cookies, pretzels, crackers, pancakes, waffles, you name it!!
Make it even easier – “No-Knead Bread”. All YOU do is mix the ingredients together and wait until it’s time to heat the oven. The yeast does all the rest.
Here’s @dduane’s first take on itand the finished product. We’ve made even more photogenic batches since.
Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, get hands-on. It’s like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat – it takes about 10 minutes – until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesn’t stick to things and feels silky-smooth.
Here’s what before and after look like.
My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to
make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the
dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.
Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and “knock it back” (more kneading, until it’s getting back to the size it started, this means there won’t be huge “is something living in here?” holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever – we’ve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roaster…
You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.
Let the dough rise again until it’s high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180°C / 355°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.
Here’s some of our bread…
Here’s our default bread recipe – it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.
Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we don’t bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a “ready for my close-up” glamour shot.
I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf.
We’re happy to have it on our table.
Even if your first attempts don’t work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like this…
I love making my own bread, but mostly I make tortillas. Here’s a recipe if you want one
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