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Lebkuchen

5 from 9 votes
Lebkuchen are a delicious, honey sweetened, spiced cookie traditional in Germany. They're easy to make and a perfect Christmas treat.
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Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 12 minutes
Chilling time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 57 minutes
Servings: 15 cookies
Course: Afternoon tea, Snack
Cuisine: German
Calories: 233
Ingredients Equipment Method Video

Ingredients
  

  • 200 g 2/3 cup runny honey
  • 85 g 1/3 cup or 3/4 stick butter
  • 200 g 1 + 2/3 cup plain / all-purpose flour
  • 100 g 1 cup ground almonds
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • ½ tsp mixed spice or all-spice
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • ½ orange
For the icing glaze
  • 135 g 1 cup icing sugar
  • 1-2 tbsp boiling water
For the chocolate glaze
  • 100 g chocolate milk or dark

Equipment

  • Digital scales
  • Mixing bowl
  • Measuring cups
  • measuring spoons
  • Sieve
  • Wire rack
  • Rolling pin
  • Piping bag
  • cutters

Method
 

Melt the honey and butter
  1. Weigh the butter and honey. Put the butter and honey into a small pot and heat it gently over a low heat. Stir it until it is completely melted.
  2. Transfer the mix into a large mixing bowl and pop it in the fridge for five minutes.
Measure out the dry ingredients
  1. Weigh out all the dry ingredients (flour, ground almonds, baking powder, bicarb and spices) into a bowl.
Mix everything together
  1. Remove your honey/butter mixture from the fridge and sieve all the dry ingredients into them. Squeeze the juice from half an orange and add the juice to your bowl.
  2. Using a wooden spoon, mix everything together. Keep mixing it until it has all come together. It'll be quite a soft and sticky dough.
  3. Put your mixture back into the fridge for at least an hour (we left ours overnight). Once it has been chilled it will become much easier to form into cookies.
Make the Lebkuchen
  1. Preheat your oven to 200C / 180C Fan / 390F and line two baking trays with baking /parchment paper.
  2. Remove your dough from the fridge and form the cookies.
  3. To make the round Lebkuchen simply roll pieces of dough (about the size of a ping pong ball) into balls. Put the Lebkuchen on your baking tray, leaving a little room for them to spread.
  4. To make the shaped cookies, roll the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface until it is about 1+ cm (just less than an inch) thick. Cut the dough out using a star cutter or any other shape you like and put them on your baking tray.
Bake the Lebkuchen
  1. Bake the cookies in the oven for around 12-15 minutes. They're ready when they have risen and turned a nice golden brown colour. They should also feel a little firm to touch.
  2. Remove them from the oven and leave them to cool on their baking trays for a few minutes before putting them on a wire rack to cool completely.
Decorate the Lebkuchen
  1. You can either decorate the cookies with an iced glaze, chocolate or a mixture or both (which is what we did).
  2. To decorate with icing, simply measure out the icing sugar into a small bowl and mix it with enough water to form a runny glaze. Dip the top of the cookies into the glaze, let the excess run off then leave them to set on a wire rack to set (icing side up).
  3. To decorate with the chocolate, melt the chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (a double boiler or bain marie). Alternatively, melt it in the microwave in short bursts until it is completely smooth. Dip one side of the Lebkuchen into the chocolate and leave it to set (chocolate side up) on your wire rack.
  4. You can also decorate the biscuits with piped icing. Make sure the icing isn't too runny and put it in a piping bag or a small freezer bag with a tiny hole cut in the corner. Pipe tiny dots or lines or any other decoration onto the Lebkuchen.

Video