Stuff em, top em, twist them in a knot, there’s lots of ways to dress a pretzel. For today’s feast I’ve been experimenting with my favourite pretzel recipe in a new form, in honor of the new set of cards for Magic the Gathering: Tales of Middle Earth.

I’ve been a Tolkien fan since the Peter Jackson films (discounting a failed attempt to read the novels in primary school), and it’s long been my geek franchise of choice. Magic the Gathering I have a more tumultuous relationship with – while I love the core mechanics, there are so many barriers that get in the way of that enjoyment, from needing to build a deck, toxicity in the community and Wizards of the Coast’s increasingly chaotic marketing.

I was active in playing the game during the most recent Innistrad cycle on account of my love of Folk Horror. But upon first hearing of the Lord of the Rings set I specifically avoided the other recent sets in anticipation of going all in on this. While family commitments means I haven’t been able to attend any of the official events yet, I’ve started constructing my first draft cube (a large pool of cards used to build reusable draft packs rather than buying new sealed packs). Let me know if you have any tips!

To get into the spirit of the universe, and thinking like a hobbit I decided to cook up a special thematic treat.  Inspired by the official partnership with Hot Pockets (unfortunately not available in Canada) I sought to put a Tolkieny twist on pizza pockets. My first thought was to experiment with a variation on lembas bread, but my research on the various adaptations all suggested it to be an extremely dry, crumbly dough, not to mention sweet, so not really conductive to toppings or fillings. Instead I settled on the idea of the pizza pretzel, a snack that can be corrupted twisted into any shape you need.

Most pizza pretzels I’ve seen sold here have seemed to just be a basic pretzel dunked in pizza sauce before baking. Most don’t even include cheese, but I’m not one for turning down an opportunity to make anything cheesy. I tried a few different techniques, both with and without a lye bath before baking, braiding two pretzels together for a stronger twist, and even stuffing cheese inside the pretzel. While a lye bath will help give you a more golden pretzel it didn’t have a noticeable impact with the sauce and cheese on top. The Double braid looked nice, but was a little too large and unwieldy to eat. The stuffed pretzels burst their seams, and while this could be improved by changing the proportions when stretching the dough, you’re only likely to enjoy the benefits when eaten hot.

All that is to say, I found the best version was just a single ring of dough, dunked in pizza sauce, topped with cheese and baked, no lye bath necessary. You get the benefit of a golden crust on top, that if you squint *might* look like an inscription in the black speech of Mordor, but definitely adds a delicious crunch. This could just as easily double as a snack for any of the other countless Lord of the Rings themed games. Reiner Knizia’s 2000 Classic ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was the first modern board game in my collection, and most recently, I just picked up Ravensburger’s ‘The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game’.

They might not be worth a million dollars but they’ll at least get you through Elevenses. Want to see a full recipe for this creation? Let me know!