I’ve never made lebkuchen before but I will definitely think about adding them to the Christmas cookie list. The recipe I used came from here.
It states in the recipe on their site that the cookies should be allowed to “mellow”. This lets the flavour improve and also changes the consistency of the cookie and it’s totally true. You might be tempted to eat these cookies immediately but they were SOOOOOOO much better several days later. At first I was worried they were really dry but after a couple of days they were softer and definitely had more flavour. To let them “mellow”, store them in an airtight container. Don’t let moisture get in or they’ll get mouldy and then everyone will cry.
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| I made these on Valentine's Day weekend so used some leftover chocolate to make hearts. |
Ingredients:
250g / 9oz / 1¾ cups plus 1tbsp plain flour 85g / 3oz / ¾ cup ground almonds spice mix - ¼tsp ground cloves, ½tsp allspice powder, ½tsp nutmeg powder, 1¼tsp cinnamon 1tsp baking powder ½tsp baking soda 175ml / ¾ cup clear honey (or golden syrup) 85g / 3oz softened unsalted butter ½tbsp lemon juice (this is lemon from ½ lemon) ½ lemon, finely grated zest (or combine to 1 lemon zested) ½ orange, finely grated zest
For the icing:
100g / 4oz / 1 cup icing sugar (confectioners’ sugar) 1 egg white, beaten
Method:
Sieve the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
Warm the honey and butter in a pan over a low heat until the butter melts, then pour these into the flour mixture. Add the lemon juice and lemon & orange zest. Mix well with a hand held whisk until the dough is throughly combined. Cover and leave to cool overnight, or for at least 2 hours. to let the flavours meld together and work that festive magic.
Heat oven to 180˚C.
Roll the lebkuchen dough in your hands into around 25 balls, each 3cm wide (1 inch wide), then flatten each one slightly into a disc. Into the centre of the discs, place an almond flake.
Divide the lebkuchen mixture between 3 baking trays lined with baking parchment, or ideally with an edible baking paper, with a decent amount of room for them to expand into.
Bake for 13 – 15 mins, or until when touched lightly no imprint remains, then cool on a wire rack. While still warm, glaze the lebkuchen with the icing glaze, made as below.
Brush the lebkuchen with glaze icing.
While the cookies are baking, make your glazing icing: mix together the icing sugar and egg white to form a smooth, runny icing.
Brush the top of each biscuit with the glazing icing. I placed them on top of a drying rack and put a board underneath to catch any dripped icing. Leave to dry out.
I then went crazy on a couple, melted some chocolate and dunked the bottoms of some of the cookies in them so they got chocolate bottoms. They don’t need it but what isn’t better with a bit of chocolate? :-)
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