Lebkuchen – German Christmas Cookies
Back at the beginning of the week I put up a poll about holiday baking, asking what types of recipes you all would like to see featured here on Brown Eyed Baker leading up to the holiday season. (If you haven’t thrown in your two cents yet, head on over and vote!) In the comments section, Heather of Squirrel Bread asked about Lebkuchen and said that she had a couple of recipes but had yet to make them. I emailed her and told her I hadn’t heard of them but would do some research and plan on making them. Less than a day later I was browsing through some of my cookbooks just looking for ideas and inspiration and wouldn’t you know, I ran across a recipe for Lebkuchen. I considered it fate and set out to make a batch right then and there. I did some reading and research and looked at other recipes and came up with this gem.
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Lebkuchen is a traditional German cookie that is usually baked for Christmas. It is most like a soft gingerbread cookie, made with molasses and full of warm spices. The glaze provides the perfect complement, a little sweet and with a hint of lemon. All of the flavors blend together so nicely and taste like the holidays; one bite and you will want to crank up the holiday music and trim the tree. You could roll these a little thinner and use cookie cutters to cut out shapes and decorate them. No matter how you make them, you will be glad you did!
Lebkuchen
Ingredients
For the Cookies:
- 3 cups (375 g) all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
- 1¼ teaspoons (1.25 teaspoons) ground nutmeg
- 1¼ teaspoons (1.25 teaspoons) ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon (0.5 teaspoon) ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon (0.5 teaspoon) ground allspice
- 1 egg
- ¾ cup (165 g) light brown sugar
- ½ cup (169.5 ml) honey
- ½ cup (168.5 ml) molasses
For the Glaze:
- 1 cup (120 g) confectioner's sugar
- 2 Tablespoons water
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
Instructions
- 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease two baking sheets or line them with parchment paper.
- 2. Sift together the flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Set aside.
- 3. Beat the egg and sugar together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl.
- 4. Beat in the honey and molasses until thoroughly combined.
- 5. On low speed, stir in the flour mixture until just combined.
- 6. Turn the dough out from the bowl onto a well-floured surface. Knead the dough, adding more flour as kneaded, until a stiff dough is formed.
- 7. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill until firm, about 2 hours or overnight.
- 8. On a well-floured surface, roll out the dough into a 9x12-inch rectangle. Cut the dough into 18 3x2-inch rectangles. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
- 9. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and let cool. Whisk together the confectioner's sugar, water and lemon juice and brush or spread on top of the cookies.
- 10. Allow the glaze to firm, and then store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.
Did you make this recipe?
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I just made these cookies using your recipe, and I just wanted to say they were not hard whatsoever, they were soft and chewy and delicious. Thanks for the recipe
Greetings — I do a weekly food blog called Feed the Spirit and am planning to do a piece in December on Lebkuchen. I would like to use your recipe. I will link to your blog — but if you could give me any more info about where the recipe came from, that would be helpful.
These were called ‘lepe’ cookies in my family. I’m including the recipe as it came from my great grandmother, an emigrant from Ettenheimweiler, Baden, Germany:
6 pounds sorghum
3 – 3 oz pkg. citron, diced
1 pound raisins, cut up
3 – 7 oz pkg. currants
½ pound English walnut meats – finely ground
½ pound pecan meats – finely ground
3 Tbsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp cloves
1 Tbsp nutmeg
1-pound lard, softened
1-pound butter, softened
1-pint buttermilk
3 Tbsp fresh baking soda
21 cups flour
Mix the 1st 11ingredients in the order listed.
Then add, alternating, the buttermilk and baking soda mixture and the flour cup by cup.
Chill overnight.
The next day, using a softball sized amount of dough, roll into a rectangle on a floured surface, about 1/4″ thick and approximately 12″ x 18″ in shape. With a sharp knife, cut into bars about 2″ x 3″.
Cook on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees 10-12 minutes.
Cook cookies overnight.
The following day, ice with the following:
1 pound powdered sugar
1 stick melted butter
enough half and half cream to make spreading consistency.
Ice the flat bottom of the cookie and let dry.
You will need more than one batch of the icing.
When icing is dry, store in air tight stone crocks for several weeks.
This recipe makes hundreds of cookies. You can cut the recipe in 1/3 with good results.
We made the cookies the first week of December so they would be properly aged by Christmas. The cookies freeze very well.
From my research, different areas of Germany had slightly different recipes. And some places made these cookies as tree decorations.
Nothing says Christmas cookie to me like lepe cookie does.
Why is the recipe lacking baking soda? They taste great but were inedible due to the consistency.
Ron, There are actually a number of different Lebkuchen recipes; some of them include a leavening agent, while others do not. It sounds like you either rolled the dough too thin or over baked them, as they are definitely a thick and chewy cookie.
I have just finished my second lot of your cookies. The first batch I did a few weeks ago to test run for the Christmas, and like Maria they just about broke my tooth. A couple of days later though they softened up a little and they all got eaten.
Today I didn’t cook them for as long and they are perfect.
Thanks Michelle and Merilyn for the comments. We put them in an airtight container and will see if they are softer today. We also have another dough batch in the fridge and will try tweaking things before we bake it. Many of the cookies were still raw on the inside when I baked them for the prescribed amount of time, but maybe they weren’t rolled out thin enough.
Will give it another try though, since the flavor was great!
Merilyn, I bake them every year and I have to place the in a container with 1/2 of an apple and store them for a week or two in a cool place. That should make them soft.
Not sure what went wrong. We followed the recipe exactly. They are rock hard! We made these last night to gift to coworkers this morning and they are so hard, I didn’t want to risk breaking someone’s tooth! The flavor is fine, but what went wrong??
Pictures are great though. :)
Hi Maria, It sounds like either too much flour was used when rolling it out, or that the cookies were overbaked.
Thank you for posting this. I have old recipe books that I used to make them, but alas over the years they have been falling apart. Being raised in Germany, these cookies are a tradition for me and my new family. I thought that I would have to miss out on them this year, but thanks to you, it will be a wonderful season to remember.
Hi Tammylou, I hope you and your family enjoy these!
Mine came out very hard….don’t know why. I noticed that I needed to bake them for a longer time because they didn’t look like they were baked through when the timer went off at ten minutes. I Was very disappointed with this recipe. Thought the flavor was rather bland too. I was expecting a more chewy cookie not hard.
Hello! Usually we use grounded nuts and sugar beet molasses for Lebkuchen. Also we sometimes use potash, candied lemon and orange peel (“Zitronat, Orangeat”). That´s what makes it very traditional. I suggest to try it, it´s so yummy! I love candle light and the smell of winter baking all over my house, when it´s really uncomfortable outside. Oh du fröhliche… :)
My family has made Lebkuchen for years! Though our recipe is a little different, I’m SO happy to see you sharing the recipe and giving this great cookie some love!
Me and my 4 year old are about to make these cookies. They do bring back childhood memories but my mother always bought them from the German deli. I’m looking forward to trying the homemade version.
I have my grandmothers recipe and none of them I’ve seen online are close to her’s. She was first generation in the US so her recipe had to of come over from Germany with her mother. She was born in 1895 so mine has to be at least a 130 year old recipe. Many things are differen. Three big ones are grandma’s does not contain brown sugar, molasses or honey. Alone with different ingredians one of the most important parts of grandma’s recipe was that once they were cut out they dried over night on the ironing board.
There was a German bakery in my town when I was a child. Year round they sold a cookie that had a molasses flavor, it was chewy, not to sweet, it had some small amount of candied fruit, some nuts and a glaze. It looked like they baked it in a long rectangle the width of a single cookie then they cut it into individual cookies after it was baked.
I have looked for a recipe, I have tried many, none come close to what I remember.
Do you have any idea what cookie it might be?
Thanks!
Hi Angie, I haven’t heard of this type of cookie and did some Googling but haven’t had much luck. I’ll keep looking and let you know if I find anything!
Try Leckerli – that maybe what Angle Moore was thinking about. The recipe I have has lots of spice and dried fruit.
I made these last year and they turned out great. I personally don’t have a taste for them, but my husband said they were better than his mother’s attempt at them and that’s saying something! My lebkuchen turned out soft, so maybe those of you who have tough cookies are rolling them out too thinly or are putting in too much flour while kneading.
The recipe I was looking for had citron in it and a thin chocolate glaze…can you help?
I made these as a child with my grandmother a recipe her mother had brought from Germany. I made this recipe today and the whole time I was putting the dry ingredients together I was thinking something had been left out. I baked the cookies and found them to be a little hard and came to believe the missing ingredient is baking soda. Will follow grandmothers recipe next time since I have found it.
your cookies look yummy i cooked them and my german teacher said they tasted just like the ones he had in germany
I LOVE lebkuchen !! I would always beg my mother to make several batches early in the holiday period so we’d have them til after New Year’s (ya right , haha ). After she made them , we’d store them in tins and hide them in the bottom of the china cabinet until holiday company came over and then we’d retrieve them . Several times , we missed a tin or two tucked way in the back and didn’t find them until the following year and guess what ??? they were even better ! They were a little hard , but absolutely perfect for coffee/tea dunking. Thanks for the memories and now I’ll have to try my hand at making them .
My grandparents on both sides were German, and they, like my mother, made Lebkuchen cookies for Christmas. Their receipe calls for molasses, brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, Anise oil, and Citron and candied fruit. The cookies were never soft and chewy and I can remember years when they were so hard that you had to soak them in milk to eat them. They were also brushed with honey, not frosted, and decorated with an almond sliver.
I just made these for my husband to try. The smell amazing while baking, they are a hard crunchy cookie but have a great flavor. Always fun a s a baker to try new recipes thanks
So I was really excited about these, and i followed your recipe exactly. They turned out rock hard and rather gross.
My grandmother made Lebkuchen, though not from the same recipe. The comments on the cookie’s hardness made me smile. Grandma always made them several months in advance and stored them in tins or an old ceramic crock until the holidays. They’re so much better after they mellow for a few months, or a year.
Nice recipe and yumy cookies, but the preheating and cookie sheet prep instructions shouldn’t be at the beginning if the dough has to be refrigerated! Put these instructions in the middle instead.
O.k., I did it! I made them! I think I didn’t put in enough of the liquid sugars, and so when it came time to knead the dough, I just had a bowl full of powder. So I added two more eggs, which I think made them a little rubbery. But they’re still delicious. They don’t look *anything* like in your photo, but hey, it’s my first time, afterall…
I make our family’s version of these every year. The Hebron ND cookbook has 8 different recipes for lebkuchen. All have butter and honey boiled first, then flour added along with eggs spices and ground citron and nuts. They are topped with a split almond and brushed with egg yolk wash before being baked. Wonderful!
About their hardness…when my grandparents were still alive, they sent us lebkuchen and other cookies from Germany every Christmas, and I remember that the lebkuchen would get softer over time. You couldn’t eat them right away. So don’t give up hope, Carolyn! I haven’t tried this recipe yet – it’ll be a first for me for lebkuchen – but I’m really excited to see how it goes!
I will try this and the true test will be when my husband’s Oma (age 94) will taste them. She is now in a nursing home and she could not make them last year, either. So, I hope this will be a nice Xmas present/ surprise for her.
Wow. delicious recipe. I like your foto..
these are one of my moms favorites, from germany and she hasnt been able to find good ones in the US so i will have to make these for her~ thanks!
I’ve just bumped them to the top of my bake for xmas list, thank you!