Lebkuchen again!
[NOTE: Regulars here may remember that most years I put up a family Christmas recipe. And here it is again, with a slight but important change in the size of the baking pans.]
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 Flora, 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!
Good, good, good! When I make it, I add some more spices, such as coriander, ginger or orange peel. To each their own. (I also modified my grandmother’s apple cobbler, which in my opinion is the best dessert recipe there is, for combining low-calorie and flavor, so my modification of your Aunt Flora’s recipe is not a put-down of her recipe. It’s a great recipe as is. I just like to fiddle.)
I made this last year and quite enjoyed it. Its a good thing it keeps — there are only two of us in the house now.
F:
In my case, the fact that it keeps is only theoretical, because I will eat every single piece I don’t give away. Luckily, I make several batches and give most of it away.
I can’t wait to try this. We have made lebkuchen in our family for generations, but it is very different—as is every other lebkuchen recipe I’ve seen. Ours makes a stiff cookie dough that has to “ripen” in the fridge for several days, and is then rolled out and cut in Christmas shapes to bake.
It calls for black walnuts, which I imagine is a modification of the original recipe. I don’t think black walnut trees are native to Europe, are they? Anyway, after baking, the cookies are glazed, and stored in tins to age for three weeks before serving. The dough is made from honey, water, brown sugar, flour, spices, eggs, mixed candied fruit, and the walnuts. For some newbies in the family in takes a while to develop a taste for the lebkuchen, others can’t wait for the season to devour the new batch.
There must be a version of lebkuchen for every region in Germany, don’t you think?
Very much like a southern whisky cake except you left out the bourbon! I soak the fruit (adding currants to the raisins) in 2/3 cup bourbon for a couple hours. Then, when you take out of oven, drizzle bourbon on the hot top of the cake (which I make in bread loaf pans and it bakes for an hour at only 300 degrees, like a fruitcake). Every two or three days, drizzle a little more bourbon on top and it will keep a long time! Except none of mine ever keep a long time. Tastes like the holidays for weeks, though. The bourbon substitutes for the icing in your recipe.
Kai Akker, I am going to try soaking the dates and raisins for the lebkuchen. Maybe not the whole-hog drizzle, though. It won’t last that long.
Neo:
I know that feeling: ours would be gone in record time except that someone (I won’t say who) keeps reminding me I need to watch my caloric intake. I wonder if I could enlist your help in explaining to someone (I won’t say who) that there is no reason NOT to make a double batch and eat it as fast as I would like?
Kai, the bourbon Is implied. Much more so than abortion in the Roe v. Wade penumbra. I mean it’s right there. The Constituon says I can stick a 350 c.i. small block Chevy v8 in a 1973 Vega.
Ok i am going to share a recipe.
Pere al vino rosso
First pears. Then red wine. Then boil. Sure. You also need a clove of garlic.
The full clove gives a nutty flavor. It is how you cut it up.
It is hard to screw this up. Red wine, pears, and a clove of garlic.
But if you do screw it up I am willing to go through gallons of wine to make sure you get it right
Whatever it takes to walk you through the process.
It may not be the case any more. But I have reasons to believe that the children of the junior enlisted may go without.
Navy and Marine Corps Relief Society. All lower case.
Action.nmcrs.org
I think the USCG benefits from this. But whatever shakes your peaches. As I do every Thanksgiving and every other holiday I give thanks that someone in uniform is standing the watch.
Lord knows I stood my share. And i am sure many commenting here can say the same. But i signed up for this. An adult.
Obvious questions need to be discussed. Like, will you be brave when the moment of truth arrives? Being brave is a choice. I am not bragging. I am not humble bragging. Years ago as a small child, walking the corridors of the naval regional hospital, looking at the horribly burned and maimed Vietnam vets, I decided to be brave.
Those guys. They used to have breakneck wheel chair races. I think just to prove to themselves they were still men.
In the age of the snowflake it might seem remarkable to decide at 5 years to be brave. I was confronted with pain that was beyond my capacity to comprehend. But they were coping.
Ever since then it has been easy.
Is it really a choice, Steve? I think a lot of that choice is innate. How did you come through?
It is a choice. And if you go into the armed forces as I chose to do you don’t have the luxury of figuring things out later.
I will grant you that the difference between a hero and a coward can boil down to a good night sleep, a hearty breakfast, and not wading 100 yards neck deep through a glacier fed river.
With Christmas upon us I will be busy with family this week. Let me take the first day of Chanukkah and this Lebkuchen thread to wish Neo and all the commenters here a Happy Chanukkah and a Merry Christmas.
If you are interested it is Amy Emergency Relief and Coast Guard Mutual Assistance.
So that takes care of 4 of the 5 armed forces. The USAF never seems to lack resources so I am not putting in a plug for them.
And I actually like the Air Force.
The proof of the pudding is not in the posting, but in the eating. 🙂
T — mutual, and ditto to all here.
I have no desire to hijack a thread. Consider this a May Day until I can buy a proper.device. every thing ducks and will and i will leave it at the pure accident of waterfowl
Merry Christmas.
Kai, I am going to pretend I am having a heart attack when the monster Australian charges me on the rugby field.
Actually I won’t have to pretend. I am now 57. What the h3ll am i doing playing rugby?
About bravery, it is a choice. Maybe you haven’t thought about it. Which is fine. Most haven’t. My dad was a USCG Radioman Senior Chief. How he didn’t end up a red smear on a white hill I will never know.
Not tackling the monster Digger is not just an act of self preservation but conservation of U.S. property. By avoiding my destruction by an ally I live to fight another day.
But on the other hand if my ship is about to turn turtle and I have a breath left in my body to dive down and rescue a shipmate I am going for it.
White hull. Not white hill. Have you ever seen a mistake and told yourself you will not make that predictable mistake? The one you saw a mile away?
Yeah.
Steve57, this is the one I liked the most….. : )
every thing ducks
and will and i will leave it at
the pure accident of waterfowl
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas!!
My dad was a USCG Radioman Senior Chief [Steve57]
Aha! Very nice.
So it was at least partly innate. When you made that choice at 5, you made it because it was also innate. That was the innate choosing, I think.
Ever since then it has been easy.
That, to me, is the amazing part.
I don’t know why it amazing. Everybody had it in them. I extracted it out of them.
I brought up the nisei. The second generation Japanese . The thing was our japanese were better than their better than theirs. Our germans our Eisenhowers and Nimitzs were better than theirs. Our “Manilla John” Basilone was better than theirs.
You do now pass your head passing Camp Pendleton on the I 5
Merry Christmas. I will you of the various ways you can 8888 up your boat trip and we in the sea services will still rescue you.
Merry Christmas.
We will rescue you.
God I suck.