Lebkuchen, the delicious German ginger cookie
Lebkuchen is Germany’s most famous Christmas treat! Its ingredients have religious symbolic meaning and healing properties.
The spices used are very special and unique! It includes cloves, ginger, cardamom, anise, allspice, mace, and sometimes they even include pepper.
There are many variations of it.
The main ingredients are usually ground nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts) candied fruit, honey, and sometimes a little bit of flour.
They are soft, with a cake texture, and often covered in chocolate or a sugar glaze and decorated with white almonds on top.
They are quite large and come in a round, rectangle or heart shape.
They last a long time and their flavor gets better the longer they sit.
Lebkuchen is often packaged in nicely decorated baskets and boxes that have become very popular in Germany.
Origin
In the 2000s BC, Gingerbread was known in Greece and Egypt as “honey cake.”
They believed that honey was a gift of the Gods and had magical healing powers. Honey cakes were also worn as a talisman in battle or as protection against evil spirits.
The most similar and most recent version of a Lebkuchen was first called “Pfefferkuchen.”
The recipe traveled from Belgium to Germany and was further developed by monks and nuns, and then it got a new name, Lebkuchen.
For them it was important to find a recipe that was filling and that would last for a long time so it could help during hard times.
They didn’t have parchment paper so monks came up with a interesting way
to keep the Lebkuchen from sticking while baking. They placed the dough in a communion Obladen.
Today they are still a very important part of these cookies.
Crusaders are known for bringing lots of spices to Europe. Pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon acted as preservatives, so they
were very important spices.The reason we associate these spices with Christmas is that the Crusaders brought them from the Holy land.
This became connected with the story of the wise men bringing spices and incense to baby Jesus.
Nurnberger
Nurnberger is especially famous for its Lebkuchen, called “Elizenlebkuchen.” The legend says that the name goes back to 1808 when the daughter of a Nuernberg baker became very ill and no doctor could help. Her father made a very fine Lebkuchen, made with no flour, and using the best ingredients, such as hazelnuts, honey, and healing spices so that the girl could grow healthy. We don’t know how the story ended, but he named the cookies after her.
Since the city was located really close to trade routes, it made it possible for people to have easy access to the right spices that came from the Orient.
Nurnberger was also in the right spot because it produced a large amount of honey thanks to a forest rich in different kinds of flowers.
The cookies made in that city became so refined that it brought a lot of tourism to this town.
The oldest and most famous Christmas market in Europe is the Christkindlesmarkt in Nuremberg, Germany.
Nuremberg’s Christmas Market
Every year, more than 2 million visitors go there and go through the 200 wood stalls, covered with red and white cloth.
It became a tradition for people to taste the Nuremberg sausage, the Lebckuchen cookies, and the Gluhwein, a Christmas wine drink mixed with spices.
At the Christkindlesmarkt, visitors usually buy a lot of souvenirs like the Nuremberg prune people, which are small figurines. The arms are made of prunes, the body is made of dried figs, and the head is made of walnut.
They are dressed up in colorful clothes. There are piano players, cooks, pastors, the devil, and many other kinds of characters.
These can’t be eaten and have been sold at these markets for decades. Other souvenirs are special cookie cutters, stamps, packets of a cinnamon fruity tea, and lots of postcards of the famous Christkindlmarkt.
Every year Nuremberg produces 70 million of Lebkuchen and ships them around the world. They are also trademarked by their geographic location under European law.
Lebkuchen
Ingredients
- 5 eggs
- 1¼ cup honey
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups ground hazelnuts
- 2 cups ground almonds
- ½ tbsp baking powder
- ¼ tbsp salt
- 3 tbsp Lebkuchengewürz (it's a mix of spices, if you scroll down you can see the recipe)
- 4 oz candied orange peel You can buy them at the store but if you make them from scratch they taste better. ( I will post a recipe for that pretty soon)
- 4 0z candied lemon peel
- 4 tbsp flour to help the candied peel not stick to each other while blending
- Backoblaten or plain wafer for the bottom of the cookie
- Sliced blanched almonds for decoration
For the Chocolate Glaze:
- 10 oz melted dark or milk chocolate
For the Sugar Glaze:
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 3 tbsp water
For the Lebkuchengewürz mix of spices:
- ¼ tbsp ground mace
- ¼ tbsp ground nutmeg
- ½ tbsp ground allspice
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- ½ teaspoon green cardamom
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon ground star anise
- 2 teaspoons ground cloves
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
- Cut the candied lemon and orange peel into small pieces and mix them with 4 tablespoons of flour to prevent them from sticking to each other. Mince them in a food processor. Set aside.
- In a bowl, beat the eggs until foamy
- Add and mix the sugar, honey, almond extract, and vanilla extract.
- Add the ground almonds, hazelnuts, salt, baking powder, Lebkuchengewürz (mix of all the spices), candied lemon, and orange peels, and stir with the mixer until it is well combined. If it is too liquidy you can add more nuts.
- Put the mixture on the Oblaten, and with the help of a spoon, spread it well on top. Using a glass as a support for the oblaten it will make spreding the cookie dough on the oblaten esier.
- Put them on parchment paper and bake on the middle rack of the oven for about 25 min.
- Let them cool.
- Brush some of the cookies with melted chocolate.
- Brush some with the sugar glaze made of powdered sugar and water mixed together.
- Put almonds on top of the cookies as decorations.
- Let the chocolate and the glaze of the Lebkuchen dry completely.