These are my favourite ‘biscuits’ – or are they cakes? Both!
I’ve had this recipe for about 30 years (!) since getting it handwritten in German from Bettina, my school exchange German friend in Pforzheim.
So here goes, an authentic German Lebkuchen recipe: I’ll translate it for you. Don’t ask me why some measurements are in imperial and some in metric but this seems to work.
Ingredients:
- 1lb plain flour
- 1lb honey
- 1/2lb butter
- 1/2lb castor sugar
- 250g ground almonds or walnuts
- 20g cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 large pinch of ground cloves
- 1 measure (mine was a double) of Kirschwasser or Schnaps (I used Calvados)
- the grated rind of a lemon
- 40g Cocoa Powder
- 2 dessertspoons of Baking powder
- 2 eggs
Sieve all dry ingredients together and mix up so you have an even blend of all together. Mix in the lemon zest.
Melt the butter gently on a really low heat.
Add the eggs, honey, butter & schnaps to the dry mixture and get your muscles out to stir this very heavy sticky mixture. It should be very moist at this stage.
Get several large flat baking sheets ready greased.
Using a little extra flour (not too much), roll the mixture out on a clean surface until it is about 8 – 10mm thick. Use fancy biscuit cutters to cut out a variety of shapes and place on baking trays. They need some space to expand so you will find you will need a lot of baking trays!
Leave overnight! This is very important – I don’t know why but my German friend wanted to stress this part! I left mine overnight in the cold oven.
The next day, (remove from cold oven, if you left them there!) heat up the oven to 150c. Bake the lebkuchen in the oven for 10-15 minutes.
When done, move to a cooling rack and while still hot, sprinkle with icing sugar or a sugar glaze. For very posh ones dip in melted chocolate – Yum.
