It’s lebkuchen time
[NOTE: Regulars here may remember that most years I put up a family Christmas recipe. And here it is again.]
This recipe was brought over from Germany sometime in the mid-1800s, and was my favorite of all the wonderful treats cooked by my great-aunt, a baker of rare gifts. She and my great-uncle were not only exceptionally wonderful people, but to my childish and wondering eyes they looked very much like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.
The name of the treat is lebkuchen, but it’s quite a different one from the traditional recipe, which I don’t much care for. This is sweet and dense, can be made ahead, and keeps very well when stored in tins.
Flora’s Lebkuchen:
(preheat the oven to 375 degrees)
1 pound dark brown sugar
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 oz. chopped dates
1 cup raisins
1 tsp. orange juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. lemon juice
Sift the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon).
Beat the eggs and brown sugar together with a rotary beater till the mixture forms the ribbon. Add the orange juice, lemon juice, and extracts to it.
Add the dry mixture to it, a little at a time, stirring.
Add the raisins, dates, and walnuts.
Grease and flour two 8 X 8 cake pans [NOTE: In previous years I sometimes said 9 X 9, but 8 X 8 is actually much better and makes for a far moister product.] Put batter in pans and bake for about 25 minutes (or a little less; test the cake with a cake tester at 21 or 22 minutes to see if it’s done yet). You don’t want it to get too dark and dry on the edges, but the middle can’t still be wet when tested.
Meanwhile, make the frosting.
Melt about 6 Tbs. of unsalted butter and add 2 Tbs. hot milk, and 1 Tbs. almond extract. Add enough confectioner’s sugar to make a frosting of spreading consistency (the recipe says “2 cups,” but I’ve always noticed that’s not exactly correct). You can make even more frosting if you like a lot of frosting.
Let cake cool to at least lukewarm, and spread generously with the frosting. Then cut into small pieces and store (or eat!).
Enjoy!
Thanks
I was thinking about your lebkuchen recipe earlier today, and looked it up on your internal search mechanism. I concluded that, based on previous years, it was too early yet for your lebkuchen posting. You proved me wrong.
Flora’s lebkuchen is delicious. I prefer its softer texture to the hardtack version my mother made. Liking the spices my mother used, I add some quantities of orange peel, ginger, and coriander to your lebkuchen recipe.
Though improvising baking recipes has its limits. A roommate improvised on a bread recipe by taking out a cup of flour and adding a cup of sunflower seeds. As that violated the 3:1 flour to water ratio that most breads use, it was evident before the bread machine had started baking that the improvisation didn’t work. I took the dough out of the machine and added bits of flour until the dough was up to snuff.
BTW, do you realize that Advanced Google Search doesn’t work on your site?
I am resigned to the 0.81 pound gain from lebkuchen. That’s gain with no pain. 🙂
I never bake here in Germany, except for pumpkin pie and brownies. There are bakeries on every corner, and you can usually get just one slice of something, which is nice because my husband and I have different tastes. I’m also cutting down on sweets to control my blood sugar.
Lebkuchen of all types is everywhere here.
My German immigrant Schwiegermutter (mother-in-law), whom I loved dearly, would bake Stollen (basically a fruitcake in the shape of a loaf of bread, except, unlike bread it has a density greater than a neutron star) around Christmas and I am sorry to say that I do not enjoy Stollen.
It took until a few years after I had married her daughter before I felt my relationship with die Schwiegermutter was strong enough that I felt safe breaking the news to her. At first she was a bit chagrined, but it became a sort-of running joke with us, and she stopped expecting me to eat a piece at Christmas and pretend I enjoyed it. Also, I was a huge fan of all her other cooking, and even learned to make some of her recipes like; Wienerschnitzel, Spatzle and Gluhwein (not sure how to type umlauts in WordPress), so she was alright with me having one, non-favorite.
I try to make Gluhwein at least once each Christmas season. It fills the house with such a great aroma, and mulled, warm wine always goes down good on a cold day. Also, I really enjoy making it. It’s an easy, safe recipe to experiment with.
I imagine we tend to grow comfortable with the foods we are exposed to in childhood and for me at Christmas it was Polish and Czech cookies like chruscik* and kolache*, which I still very much enjoy today. Another favorite was something we called, “Polish pizza.” That’s all I know it as, and if you ask for it with that title in a Chicago bakery you’ll get one, but I imagine it has some other, official, Polish name. I will have to ask my Mom when I see her (Covid willing) this Christmas. Polish Pizza is like a huge, circular danish divided into fourths or fifths or sixths… With each, separate section being a different type of topping. My favorites are cheese and apricot, but blackberry and raspberry are common, as is plum.
Ah! Plums! That reminds me of another thing my Schwiegermutter would make at Christmas, Pflaumenkuchen! Unlike Stollen, I like that a bit. My wife learned to make it from her, and makes it well, although I don’t imagine she has made it more than 3 or 4 times in our 30 years of marriage. Perhaps this Weihnnachten?
*I just looked up the spelling of these words. When I heard my immigrant relatives pronounce them they sounded like; “clooskie” and “kalachkie.” Based on the pictures I found the spellings I used above appear to be accurate, but about 15 years ago when Kolache shops began appearing outside of my native Chicago I was confused since the things sold at Kolache labeled stores don’t look much like the “kalachke” sold in every bakery in Chicago.
expat,
I am not a huge sweet or baked goods fan, but when I am in Germany or that section of Europe I usually walk into a bakery at least once a day and buy something to eat. Everything is so fresh and so pure it seems almost absurd not to enjoy it while one can. Even something as simple as a roll with butter. I do not understand why those things cannot be duplicated outside of Europe, but I have yet to find a bakery or recipe here in the States that can duplicate what every bakery easily manages there. And, it’s a cliche, but the Bretzeln are amazing! And, again, I have yet to find the same thing here. You can find a lot of big, fresh baked pretzels here, but they don’t compare. I even spent a few years trying to make them myself, but gave up.
Froh Weihnnachten!
This has got me thinking about “coffee cake.” I don’t even know if it is sold any more, but when I was a kid anytime adults were feeding guests any time before noon there was something called coffee cake that would be served. Well, it never actually seemed to be served, it seemed to always just be in the middle of the table. I can’t recall my mother or anyone ever baking one in the house, they always seemed to come from a bakery. They were delicious by the way. Even though they often had plenty of sugar and icing, it was still common to slather a lot of butter on top of one’s slice.
It wasn’t typically offered to kids, but once the grownups were done chatting and drinking coffee at the table it was fair game for the kids to grab what was left. It’s odd. It always just seemed to be there when there were guests (or my family were guests somewhere) and I don’t recall one every surviving past noon. Not sure where they came from!
Oh, and they weren’t “cake” shaped. Just sort of looked like flat, oval blobs.
expat:
I bet not of this type, though.
I’ve never found a lebkuchen recipe anything like it. Not even remotely. It’s like it’s a different species of pastry, almost.
Rufus,
The best bakery in our town has wonderful cakes (including a Danish Kirschtorte with marzipan topping and little puff pieces around the top. They once told me that a former customer had moved to Berlin and had her baker there call for recipes.
Neo,
We see lots of lebkuchen cookies here, baked in various ways. It is not so often a cake.It is probably a regional thing.
Rufus, I googled Polish Pizza and this is what I found. But it doesn’t sound like the Polish Pizza you mention. I’ve never heard of either and they both sound interesting. https://www.curiouscuisiniere.com/zapiekanki-polish-street-food/
Es lebe der Lebkuchen!
On the subject of Polish Food, if anyone is trying to lose weight or keep off, do *not*, I repeat do *not* stock up on Solidarnosc brand Sliwka Naleczowska chocolates. It is especially not recommended to store these little balls of evil in the freezer and eat them frozen. You have been warned.
expat:
I think it may be that my recipe is very very old. I think they may have brought it from Germany or Austria in the 1860s and so maybe it’s some old-fashioned regional variation.
Rufus:
The German chain Lidl has quite a few stores in the US and their Bretzeln are pretty good. My wife is German and she goes to the Lidl near us to buy baked goods. I don’t know if there is a store near you.
Rufus T: Your post about bakeries in Europe made my taste buds begin to go ping, ping, ping! I don’t travel much any longer, and haven’t been in Europe in at least a quarter century. But oh my! do I miss good European breads. Costco sells something they call a baguette, but it’s a sorry substitute. And someone told me I could get frozen rolls in the supermarket and cook them fast and they were like the breakfast rolls I remember from Germany, but they, too, are a sorry substitute. We have a bakery here that is part of a chain (except the family won’t talk to each other) that started in Bishop CA and has made it as far north as Carson City, NV. It’s called Schat’s, and they make marvelous pastries, but their breads are still lacking something. A French friend told me many years ago that Europeans use hard wheat and Americans use soft wheat (or was it vice-versa?), but I don’t know if it’s the flour or the manner in which it’s prepared.
If you want an unforgettable treat, order mussels marinière in Brussels or Paris, and use pieces of baguette to soak up the juice!
Eva Marie,
You are correct, that is not what I was referring to. This, https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/13/05/8f/d5/photo0jpg.jpg
is a good likeness.
F,
It’s funny with regional foods, for some reason they often don’t travel well. New York bagels are famous in this regard and I think many folks theorize it has something to do with the water? I swear Guinness beer tastes different in Ireland than anywhere else. I have found hundreds of pizzerias outside of Chicago who should be sued for libel for claiming they serve “Chicago style” pizza. Folks from Philly will swear any cheesesteak purchased outside of the city limits is not a cheesesteak.
Regarding Europe, my wife and I ate at the Paris hotel in Vegas and the french fries were fantastic! They tasted exactly like french fries from France, Belgium or The Netherlands. I mentioned this to the waiter and he said the hotel actually flies potatoes in from France daily. Hard to believe, but he seemed serious. They certainly tasted authentic.
Gregory Harper,
Looks like the nearest Lidl to me is about 500 miles away. I like pretzels but…