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I loved this, as I expected I would! The research is so varied and really fascinating. I wouldn't even have known where to begin for most of this. You're like the Mary Berry of MIddle-earth! :D :D :D

I'd love to try this idea. I'm wondering if I could make it feasible at the start of the school year, when I'm working 60-hour weeks and usually exhausted. But hey, you've done a lot of my work for me, haven't you? :D

Again, a fascinating concept. Have you considered doing something similar for other canonical celebrations? This could be a fascinating regular feature in the newsletter: a historical recipe that fits a canonical celebration at that time of the year.

Thank you for this! I love historic recipes (mostly Medieval and Early Modern) and definitely want to try that seed cake for my birthday which actually happens to be September 22nd! My family’s mostly Swedish and 3/4 oz of caraway doesn’t seem that much, about the amount you’d put in a loaf of rye bread.

 

You must live pretty close if San Fran is across the bay from you. I’m a hour south of the city, on the coast.

Glad you found this useful!  Congratulations on having such an interesting birth date. 

My favorite cookbooks are medieval; a chance encounter with Two Fifteenth-Century Cookbooks was my gateway experience, soon followed by Digby, but nowadays I prefer medieval Andalusian, Egyptian, and Persian ones.  Anything with eggplant, really.  :-)

I'm in Berkeley.

The birthday tea sounds like it was a great time for you and your friends! I'm curious to try out the seed cake recipe. (Could the recipe be halved without poor results, do you think? In the current situation I can't quite justify half a dozen eggs and a box of butter on one cake - I might feel differently if I kept chickens, but as it is...)

Excellent meta!

Thanks!  We have a lot of fun with it, even if we can't always do the full-blown open house.

I don't foresee any difficulty cutting the recipe in half.  You might want to make it in one pan (maybe a 7" springform?), and you'll have to adjust the cooking time, but in all other ways it should adapt readily.

Another possibility is to make the full recipe and freeze two of the cakes.  Well covered, poundcake freezes fine, and then you can be like Bilbo and look forward to your two beautiful little seed-cakes.