Bake the magic of Christmas with these homemade German Lebkuchen. These chewy, spiced gingerbread cookies are packed with ground almonds, hazelnuts, honey, citrus and holiday spices. These classic European cookies are much better than store bought and naturally gluten-free too!
About Lebkuchen German Gingerbread Cookies
Lebkuchen are some of the most delicious Christmas cookies ever. These German gingerbread cookies taste like pure Christmas with gingerbread spices and a wonderfully chewy texture. Even if you've been underwhelmed with storebought Lebkuchen, I promise these home made lebkuchen are so much better that they're in a different league! I didn't even think they were the same cookie honestly as the store bought ones are a bit dry and stale tasting.
Is Lebkuchen the same as gingerbread? Lebkuchen is technically gingerbread but it's quite different from gingerbread cookies that are in Australia, US, Canada and the UK. Lebkuchen (which translates to gingerbread in German) is chewy, highly spiced and is made of nuts without any flour (so yes it's gluten free too!). To me, it almost has a cakey texture to it.
Lebkuchen are made with ground hazelnuts and almonds (sometimes walnuts) and mixed peel and are sweetened with honey, brown sugar and are fragrant with spices.
If you love fruit cake, you will LOVE Lebkuchen!
Video How To Make Lebkuchen German Gingerbread Cookies
Video: How to Make Lebkuchen German Gingerbread Cookies
Ingredients For Lebkuchen German Gingerbread Cookies
Rice paper discs (oblaten) - You can buy these already cut or make these by tracing circles and cutting out rice paper which is what I did.
Eggs - Go for medium sized eggs as large eggs will make the batter too sticky.
Light or dark brown sugar - Light brown sugar has a lighter flavour while dark has a more molassesy flavour.
Honey - Use a runny honey.
Vanilla - Vanilla bean paste, extract or essence works here.
Mixed peel - This is one thing you may have to get from an Italian deli or speciality food store. Usually around Christmas-time shops will start to stock mixed peel as it is an ingredient in Pannettone.
Cornflour/fine cornstarch - this is to prevent the mixed peel from sticking together and gives the processed mixed peel a powdery finish.
Almonds - I use a commerical almond meal for this.
Hazelnuts - Finely grind unroasted hazelnuts to make hazelnut meal
Gingerbread spices - You can buy a gingerbread spice mix or make your own. This gingerbread spice mix is made up of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg star anise, coriander.
Baking powder - To make the cookies rise a little
Salt - Fine salt to balance the sweetness.
Lemon - Use lemon zest to lift the balance of sweetness to tart and juice to use in the icing.
Icing sugar - Use pure icing sugar (rather than icing sugar mixture) as we want the icing to set hard.
Rum - I used a spiced rum to keep with the spiced theme.
Almonds - You can buy almonds already blanched or you can skin almonds yourself (see tips below).
Tips For Making Lebkuchen German Gingerbread Cookies
1- The texture of the cookie dough is sticky and a little wet so it is important to weigh all of your ingredients.
2 - I usually don't specify the weight of eggs but in this case, I have given the weight of the eggs without shells to avoid the sticky issue above.
3 - The eggs and sugar beat up to a thick, pale texture after whisking for 10 minutes. For this reason I don't recommend whisking this by hand as it requires 10 minutes of whisking.
4 - Don't worry if the edges of your cookie batter spread out onto the parchment. The middle of the cookie is the stickiest part and the edges should lift off easily.
5 - To blanch almonds to add on top, place around 18-20 almonds in a bowl (you need 1.5 almonds per cookie). Cover with hot water from a kettle and cover and steep for 15 minutes. The skins will slip off. Using a sharp knife, carefully slice the almonds in half.
6 - Option: Make chocolate dipped Lebkuchen! Melt chocolate and dip the cookies in chocolate.
7 - Store Lebkuchen at room temperature in an airtight container where they will last from 3-4 weeks.
12 rice paper discs (oblaten), 6cms/2.4inches in diameter
80g/2.8ozs eggs (weight without shell), around 2 medium eggs, room temp
65g/2.3ozs light or dark brown sugar
47g/1.6ozs mixed peel
25g/0.9ozs cornflour/fine cornstarch
50g/1.7ozs finely ground almonds
50g/1.7ozs finely ground hazelnuts
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon gingerbread spices (see recipe below)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
For Icing
120g/4ozs pure icing sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon/15ml/0.5floz water
1 teaspoon rum
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
18-20 blanched almonds, cut in half horizontally
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1 PREP - Line a large baking tray with parchment and line up the rice paper discs at least 1.5 inches apart. Preheat oven to 150C/300F conventional or 130C/266F fan forced.
Step 2 WHISK - Fit a mixer with a whisk and place the eggs and brown sugar in the mixer bowl. Whisk on medium high speed for 10 minutes (yes that long!) where it will change from a dark brown colour to a light tan, almost white thick texture.
Mixed peel and flour powder
Step 3 POWDER - While the eggs are whisking, place the mixed peel and cornflour into a food processor or Thermomix and process until a very fine powder (Thermomix: 15 seconds, speed #10).
From this colour...
...To this
Step 4 MIX - When the eggs are thick and white, stir in the ground almonds, ground hazelnuts, honey, vanilla, mixed peel and flour powder, gingerbread spices, baking powder, salt and lemon zest. Whisk on medium speed for 2 minutes.
Step 5 SPREAD - Take a 3/4 oz ice cream scoop and scoop the batter onto the rice paper discs. The batter should not be too runny but it can spread a little. Coax the batter to reach the edges by dipping a palette knife in a bowl of water and tap off excess water and gently push the mixture to the edges. Bake for 20-22 minutes. Cool on the tray for 30 minutes.
Step 6 FROST - Mix the icing sugar, lemon juice, rum and vanilla together until you get a smooth icing mixture. Place the cookies on a cooling rack and dip each cookie in the icing, returning to the rack to set completely. While the icing is still wet, attach 3 almond halves on top if using.
Icing texture
Gingerbread Spice Mix
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon star anise
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
Substitution notes:
Subs for oblaten wafers are communion wafers.
If you don't have a gingerbread spice mix you can alter a pumpkin pie spice mix to add more ground ginger into it.
You can sub cornflour/fine cornstarch with plain all purpose flour. I used cornflour to keep it gluten free for gifts.
You can sub the rum for water or more lemon juice.
Personal Note
I did miss out on having a Halloween party this year as we were away but now I am raring to go with Christmas. In fact I made these Lebkuchen in November when we got back from overseas because I wanted to eat something Christmassy. I actually made Lebkuchen last year too but I didn't have time to put it up on the blog.
Whenever we go away we have someone looking after our house. It has been a lot of trial and error and we had one house sitter who is such a lovely person and a friend but broke so many things that we couldn't have her back (including my Kitchenaid stand mixer! WELP).
Mr NQN's brother Manu now looks after our house. He has flexible working hours so he comes and goes at different times and his work is actually near our house so he likes that his commute has been cut in half. It's also nicer to for him to be out of his mother's wing as Tuulikki lives in a small apartment.
When we came back, he left the house spotless, the cleanest that anyone has ever left it. We have one bathroom downstairs and an en suite upstairs but I noticed that Manu left his towel in the downstairs bathroom. It turned out that Manu hadn't even noticed that there was a bathroom next to the bedroom. I guess he never wondered what was behind the door which admittedly isn't visible from the bed!
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever house-sat? Have you ever eaten homemade Lebkuchen?
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