Further Research on Honey Cakes

I spent part of last evening reading the relevant chapter of The Hobbit, just to focus a bit more on what the target is. The cuisine that Beorn serves is not described in great detail except for two things: the drink is mead, and there is a form of cake he makes with honey that is twice-baked for long-lasting storage. These are probably intended for winter rations rather than for journeys, as we know that he can travel quite rapidly in the form of a bear (for whom the whole world, more or less, is food). 

That suggests to me that there is a normal, everyday honey cake that is not twice-baked, but that a certain number of the cakes gets twice-baked to further preserve them for winter storage. Honey is mentioned as an ingredient of these cakes, and honey also has strong preservative qualities. 

Now if you look at this list of twice-baked foods, you'll note that there is very substantial variety: everything from biscotti to Detroit-style pizza and New York-style cheesecake. The most interesting one on the list to me is the first one, Bappir, an ancient Sumerian way of preserving grains and gruit for beer-making.

An historical Sumerian twice-baked barley bread that was primarily used in ancient Mesopotamian beer brewing. Historical research done at Anchor Brewing Co. in 1989 (documented in Charlie Papazian's Home Brewer's Companion, ISBN 0-380-77287-6) reconstructed a bread made from malted barley and barley flour with honey and water and baked until hard enough to store for long periods of time; the finished product was probably crumbled and mixed with water, malt and either dates or honey and allowed to ferment, producing a somewhat sweet brew. It seems to have been drunk with a straw in the manner that yerba mate is drunk now.

Probably closer to Beorn's product is the medieval biscuit, however. Given Tolkien’s work in philology, he would have known this root. 

The Middle French word bescuit is derived from the Latin words bis (twice) and coquere, coctus (to cook, cooked), and, hence, means "twice-cooked". This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven. This term was then adapted into English in the 14th century during the Middle Ages, in the Middle English word bisquite, to represent a hard, twice-baked product.

This gives rise, as they point out, to the English usage of the word "biscuit" as a kind of cookie, drier and crumbly compared to the soft American biscuits. Given further Tolkien’s love of English traditions, I think this is likely the concept he was thinking of when describing a twice baked cake. 

So I think the final product should be much like a biscuit, capable of being twice-baked in a slow oven to produce the preserved form that will store well, but also of being enjoyed once-baked when long-storage is not a concern.