Hope that Headline got your attention.
Seriously, these are the greatest!!
Here's Silver holding one of our prized cookies.
They are called Lebkuchen - a German Christmas cookie that we made every year and reminds me so much of Christmas time. We were able to eat these for breakfast Christmas morning.
Lebkuchen means "life cakes". We used to take cookies to school and put on a puppet show for our classes about the story of Lebkuchen: A princess grew ill and hadn't eaten in days. The King grew worried and had a contest (I forget what the prize was, but I'm sure quite a generous gift). The winner of the contest was a baker who made these healthy cookies made of nuts, fruit, honey, eggs, etc. which the princess ate and whos energy returned her to health.
These truly are magical cookies for me.
Germans cook using a scale to weigh all of their ingredients. Thanks Mom for converting everything to measurements that I can more easily use :)
From my heart to yours: ENJOY!
1 1/2 cubes (3/4 cups butter)
1 C sugar
1/2 container Citron (after much searching through the store - this is found on the baking isle. These are the candied fruits similar to the ones in Fruit cake, but trust me, these are nothing like fruit cake).
Candied lemon zest or/and orange zest. Either candied or made fresh. I left this step out and they still turned out amazing.
1/2 cup of nuts (either 1/4 cup almonds and 1/4 cup hazelnuts, or 1/2 cup of either one). I enjoy almonds.
Put your citron, zest, sugar and nuts in the blender until you have a fine mix.
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 C honey
2 eggs (You can either put in 2 whole eggs or 1 whole egg and one egg yolk, saving the egg white to frost the cookies with - the egg yolk gives the frosting a shine.
3 3/4 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp spices: mix the following together and only use 1 tsp of the following mix:
1/4 tsp ground anise
1/2 tsp cardamon (this smells like Christmas trees :)
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ginger
Depending on how the dough is, if it is too dry add 2-3 Tbsp milk. Keep in mind that the less flour you put in these, the softer the cookies will be.
Put your dough in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Again, when rolling and cutting out your cookies, use the least amount of flour that you can get away with.
I find that when I cut out the cookies - if I cut them out rather thick, they turn out better.
Cook at 350 for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.
Frosting: This Makes these cookies!
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1 egg white
powdered sugar until thick.
(I personally use 2 eggs in the recipe and skip the egg white in the frosting).
I also find that I use quite a bit more frosting than this, so be pretty generous with the lemon juice and then add powdered sugar till spreadable.
Use a pastry brush to brush the frosting on the cookies.
Now, because these cookies have honey in them, they are rather hard. Put them in the freezer overnight and then let them thaw or put them in a tupperware with an apple to soften them up. They are soft and oh, so delicious. Oh, one other note: I have found that Lebkuchen is an acquired taste. Some people that I have shared this with have not cared for them, but as for me and my house, we think these are fabulous!!
So I thought there would be plenty of picture taking times with these great cookies because we made so many of them. But quick as a wink (after eating most of them myself) there was just this one little lone star left. Quick! Grab a picture before Mom eats it!! I had a couple of attempts at taking the picture myself - I could only seem to get at most 3 things in the picture: Cookie, Silver and Mom, Cookie River and Silver, or just the girls without the cookie. Time to call Daddy to take the pic for us:
