Lebkuchen German Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Recipe Overview
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 22 minutes
Makes: 12 Lebkuchen Cookies
Ingredients Needed
For Cookies
- 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.
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).
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.
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?