Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen are spiced german biscuits which are a little bit like ginger bread with a soft cakey texture. I wanted to have a try making my own this year and I also made some for christmas gifts as well.

Lebkuchen (makes approx. 35)

Ingredients
100g Honey
100g Treacle
20g butter
1 egg
1 tbs lemon juice
zest from 1 lemon
250g plain flour
100g ground almonds
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger

Method

Heat up the honey and treacle until it reaches boiling point and remove from the heat. (I think just honey would also work, or golden syrup but I had some left over treacle from making a christmas cake.) Stir in the sugar and butter until melted, followed by the lemon juice, zest and egg. Mix well until all the ingredients are combined.

Finally stir in the dry ingredients of flour, ground almonds, bicarbonate of soda and the spices. It will look like a gooey, brown mess.

Don't worry if the dough seems a bit wet, place in a food bag or bowl and pop in the fridge overnight.

The first run of making these I tried using christmas shaped cookie cutters but the dough is very difficult to work with and roll out. If you have more patience than me, feel free to try rolling out (with plenty of flour) and give cutters a try, but it was too time consuming and awkward for me. I found it best to make small balls of dough (approximately 20g each) using a little flour to stop them sticking to my hands and then patted the balls into round cookie shapes.

Place the cookies in a preheated oven 180 °C for 8-10 minutes until lightly browned. The cookies may still look a little soft when you get them out the oven but they will harden as the cool. Allow to cool on the tray for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack or plate to cool completely.

Once cool you can eat them as they are, or you can add icing or chocolate to them.

Do you like baking for christmas? What are your favourites?

Thanks for reading x