My first two attempts at lembas were a great success. Besides the unfortunate event with the pantry moths accident, everything was perfect. The only problem was that the amount of lembas was steadily decreasing. Therefore I decided to make some more. And to include some improvements that came from the first two trials.
Improvements
First change is the coffee. Adding something to give you an energy boost is a good idea. But adding coffee was not an ideal solution. The taste was great in the beginning, but it faded over the years. And this transition in taste was a nuisance and a bit disappointing. The caffeine content was probably still the same, since caffeine is a fairly stable molecule. In water caffeine is stable for a few days, in pharmaceutical preparations for decades, so it should remain unchanged in my lembas for at least a decade. I decided to test matcha tea as the source of the caffeine. It is finely grounded and it can be easily mixed in the lembas, has a fairly mild taste compared to the coffee and it has at least double the amount of caffeine present in the coffee. A perfect substitute.
All other ingredients were already perfect in the first version, so I did not change them. Except for the amount of cloves where I increased the amount significantly. Cloves have, besides great taste, also antiseptic activity and I am hoping that they could also prevent accidents with the pantry moths. I believe that it should work in theory and the Internet also more than confirmed my line of thought.
Lembas 3.0 recipe
- 250 g dried figs
- 250 g dried dates
- 150 g semolina or wheat bran
- 75 g honey
- 2 g (approx. ½ teaspoon) of powdered cloves
- 4 g matcha tea (added to ½ of the total mass)
The preparation was similar to the previous version 1.0 and version 2.0. I chopped the dried fruit and mixed it with semolina and honey. I changed the wheat bran for semolina simply because I did not have any bran at hand. When the mass was completely homogenous, I divided it in half. One half was shaped in a loaf shape, while I added the matcha tea to the other half and kneaded it again. When the mass was homogenous, I made another loaf. The difference between the two loaves was obvious, but the taste was not that different. Overall, a great success and according to plan.
Tasting and Aging of Lembas 3.0
The lembas were perfect. Relatively soft, chewable, sweet, with exactly the right amount of cloves. It tasted like Christmas, according to one younger taster. I was relatively surprised that the cloves were not more dominant in the overall taste. Even more surprisingly the taste of the matcha lembas did not differ much from the regular one. In a blind tasting, I could not tell them apart, since the cloves were the main thing that I tasted. Nevertheless, I expect the match to have its desired effect, since it should contain more caffeine compared to the other teas and coffee. I also added more matcha compared to coffee in lembas version 2.0. The taste was not changed and the amount of caffeine was increased, so I judged the matcha lembas a complete success.
Despite the fact that I added a lot of cloves to prevent accidents with pantry moths, I decided to store the lembas in a linen sack to prevent direct exposure to potential dangers. Now the only thing is to wait and sample the lembas regularly.
