Lebkuchen

I lived in Germany for a year, working in a school as an English Assistant, and so this month’s Regional Recipes choice of Germany set me off on memory lane, thinking of my favourite dishes from that year.   Whenever I visited German friends they invariably had a delicious selection of cakes on offer and would serve them with strong fresh coffee.  One of the teachers often made me her daughter’s favourite,  kartofelpuffer, a type of pancake made with grated potato.  Fish with dill sauce was another standard everyday dish.  In the end I decided to make lebkuchen for this event.   Lebkuchen are spicy gingerbread biscuits which are eaten a lot at Christmas time and often given as gifts.  The flavours remind me of the Christmas markets, drinking warming spicy glühwein in various towns and cities on weekend visits to other English assistants.   This was of course another highlight of my year in Germany.  The more I think about it, the more dishes I want to nostalgically create.  I suspect this won’t be the last German recipe I post this year.

To make the lebkuchen I followed a basic recipe from BBC Good Food.  Regional Recipes is hosted by Joanne of Eats Well with Others.

Ingredients

125g plain flour

45g ground almond

2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

a pinch each of cloves, nutmeg and black pepper

100ml runny clear honey

40g butter

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

How to make Lebkuchen

1. Put the honey and butter in a pan over a low heat and leave to melt.

2. Put all the other ingredients in a bowl.

3. When the butter has melted, pour into the bowl and mix well.   It should all form one ball of fairly solid dough and come away from the sides of the bowl.

4. Cover and leave to cool.  Ideally leave overnight.  I waited 24 hours before moving onto making the biscuits.

5. Roll the dough into about 15 balls about 3cm wide.  Squash so they are a little flatter.  Put them on a tray covered in baking parchment.

6. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 180°c. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

I was going to make some icing to go on these but before I had to time to make it we’d eaten half of them and so unfortunately it never got made.  However, they would be great with a thin layer of icing, perhaps with a squeeze of lemon added to it.