"...[F]airy stories offer also, in a peculiar degree or mode, these things: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Consolation, all things of which children have, as a rule, less need than older people...
"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', or 'fugitive'. In it's fairy-tale - or otherworld - setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur."
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories

"A little beer would suit me better, if it is all the same to you, my good sir," said Balin with the white beard. "But I don't mind some cake--seed-cake, if you have any."

"Lots!" Bilbo found himself answering, to his own surprise; and he found himself scuttling off, too, to the cellar to fill a pint beer-mug, and to the pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed-cakes which he had baked that afternoon for his after-supper morsel.

--An Unexpected Party, The Hobbit
( Seed Cake Recipe from The London Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea )

It is well-known among hopeless Tolkien geeks ( click here for geekiness )

The British National Archives has published excerpts from Tolkien's officer's service record.
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