Lebkuchen
By Lottie. Filed in Biscuits |Tags: biscuits, ginger, hearts, honey, spice
Christmas started in our little flat this weekend and now the tree is up and looking beautiful. This also meant it was time to start Christmas Baking! I love the fact that December can mean a whole month of baking lots of lovely christmassy treats. And first up was Lebkuchen, a traditional German Christmas treat, a little bit like gingerbread. Yes, I do love Germany. One of my friends text me this weekend to say she was in Berlin, I got a little jealous! However I took a trip to Hobbycraft this weekend, so that made up for it! I bought a new heart shaped cookie cutter, so my Lebkuchen are love hearts!
What you need: (recipe from BBC good food)
250g plain flour
85g ground almonds
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch each ground cloves , grated nutmeg and black pepper
200ml honey
85g butter
zest of 1 lemon
100g icing sugar
1 egg white , beaten
3 tbsp lemon juice
Melt the butter with the honey in a pan. Once it is melted add all the dry ingredients and the lemon zest and mix well. Put the mixture into a food bag to cool and put it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. It should solidify into more of a cookie dough consistency. Once the dough is fully cooled you can roll it out. This is best done between two pieces of cling film, until the dough is about 5mm thick.
Use a cutter to cut the dough into the shape you want and put them onto a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper. Bake in them in the oven at 180C for 15 minutes.
Leave the biscuits to cool on a baking tray. Once cool you can dip them in the icing. To make the icing mix the icing sugar with the egg white and lemon juice until smooth. Dip each biscuit into the icing and leave it to set. You can also dip them into chocolate instead of icing if you prefer. I finished mine off with a sprinkle of glitter dust (just because it is new!).
I’m entering these into Tea Time treats hosted by Kate at What Kate Baked and Karen at Lavender and Lovage!
Lottie xx
Sunday, December 11th 2011 at 5:47 pm |
these were soooo yummy!
Monday, December 12th 2011 at 4:40 pm |
ohhh I was planning to make these next weekend, they are delicious. Did your recipe come out chewy? c
Tuesday, December 13th 2011 at 8:12 am |
No they weren’t chewy, they were really quite soft. I guess you could try golden syrup in the recipe instead of honey if you wanted them chewy?
Wednesday, December 14th 2011 at 8:26 pm |
I think I meant soft really so that’s perfect.
Tuesday, December 13th 2011 at 3:16 pm |
I love these – I used to work in the German speaking part of Switzerland and the Christmas baking was one of my favourite things. It was not only the biscuits, but also the presentation – I still have some of the pretty little tins with music boxes built into them
Tuesday, December 13th 2011 at 9:13 pm |
What delicious biscuits- I remember as a child turning up my nose at these as I found the peppery taste a little too strong for my delicate palate. But it is fair to say I’ve more than made up my consumption levels since and each Christmas greedily devour many a lebkuchen! Thank you for entering Tea Time Treats!