Spiced Lebkuchen

Hi friends! I’m back from our last minute trip to Dubai and I’m ready to do some Christmas baking, from cookies to some savoury festive finger food!

These German Lebkuchen spiced biscuits actually remind me of my childhood, my mother would always buy them in December. Thick, springy dough, full of lovely winter spices and completely coated in chocolate, we absolutely loved them and she would have to hide them from us, well, and from herself haha :D
This is my first attempt at making them, I found this great recipe at Waitrose website and thought to myself I should give it a go and test it for you guys! They turned out great, maybe I should’ve made them a bit thicker but other than that I’m really happy with how they look and especially with how they taste and smell!

Ingredients

90g unsalted butter
60g clear honey
100g black treacle
30g dark brown muscovado sugar
350g self-raising flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
Pinch fresh nutmeg
½ tsp ground allspice
Pinch ground cloves
1 egg

100g dark chocolate
Knob of butter

Method

1. In a pan, melt the butter, honey, treacle and muscovado sugar together. Cool.

2. Sift the flour, soda, spices and a pinch of salt into a bowl; make a well in the centre. Mix the egg into the butter mixture, then pour into the well in the dry ingredients. Stir with a spoon/hand until it forms a dough.

3. Knead briefly on a floured surface until smooth, then shape into a disc, wrap in cling film and chill for 20-30 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 180 ̊C. On a very lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to just over 0.5cm thick and stamp out different-sized stars with pastry cutters. Put on parchment-lined baking sheets; re-roll the trimmings to create more. Bake for 7-8 minutes. Allow to cool for a minute, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Optional: Melt the chocolate with a little butter in a microwave, stir well and transfer to a piping bag and drizzle over biscuits. Done! You can eat them immediately or simply keep them in a biscuit tin and serve with tea :)

Let me know what you think :)

-A