This dish was my import from Germany over 20 years ago. It contains molasses, honey, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. One of my fondest Christmastime recollections of Germany is of this.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Additional Time: | 9 hrs 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 10 hrs |
| Servings: | 72 |
| Yield: | 6 dozen |
Ingredients
- ½ cup honey
- ½ cup molasses
- ¾ cup packed brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ⅓ cup diced candied citron
- ⅓ cup chopped hazelnuts
- 1 cup white sugar
- ½ cup water
- ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
Instructions
- In a medium saucepan, stir together the honey and molasses. Bring the mixture to a boil, remove from heat and stir in the brown sugar, egg, lemon juice and lemon zest. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg. Add the molasses mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well. Stir in the citron and hazelnuts. Cover dough and chill overnight.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. Using a small amount of dough at a time, roll out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into small rectangles and place them 1 inch apart onto the prepared cookie sheet.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until no imprint remains when touched lightly. Brush the icing over the cookies while they are still hot and quickly remove them to wire cooling racks. Store in airtight container with a cup of orange or apple for a few days to mellow.
- To make the icing: Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Heat to between 234 and 240 degrees F (112 to 116 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms a soft ball that flattens when removed from the water and placed on a flat surface. Remove from heat and stir in the confectioners’ sugar. If icing becomes sugary while brushing cookies, re-heat slightly- adding a little water until crystals dissolve.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 61 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 14 g |
| Cholesterol | 3 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 1 g |
| Saturated Fat | 0 g |
| Sodium | 15 mg |
| Sugars | 9 g |
| Fat | 1 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Thank you so much for this recipe! When I was a child, growing up, our Onkel Hans in Germany would always send over a box of Lebkuchen at Christmastime. This recipe is just like the ones he would send. It brought back happy memories of childhood. The only changes I made were to add 1/2 tsp. of Anise extract, I cut the Allspice to 1/2 tsp., but added 1/2 tsp. Mace and 1 tsp. Ginger. They tasted fantastic. I did make a batch without the Anise, Ginger and Mace, and my boyfriend like the version with the additions better. Great recipe. Will make every year at Christmas from now on,
One of my all time favorite Christmas cookies! (And I’m not even a little bit German, but don’t hold that against me). If you are going to make these I HIGHLY recommend taking the extra step of making the glaze to go over them… I tried taking a bit into one of them without the glaze and immediately spit it out due to the overpowering spices, but after adding the glaze the entire batch was gone in an hour at my holiday party.
This is my all time favorite cookie to make a Christmas!!! Has become a tradition 3 years in a row now!
As always it’s hard to stir roll and cut but it’s one of my favorite cookies. Be sure to mellow them with the apple before eating. This makes this a great make ahead cookie for Christmas
Made it exactly as written. Definitely refrigerate overnight for easier handling of the sticky dough. Only use “ fancy” molasses. These cookies taste fantastic!
Honestly, I haven’t tried too many German type cookies even though I am of German heritage but I imagine these must be what German cookies are supposed to taste like! I really liked these cookies but only gave them 4 stars because of the time consumption and the glaze. However, I am super glad I had the time to make these and will be adding them to my Christmas rotation, just might try some of the other suggestions which seemed to be less time consuming. I also was unable to find candied citron but made my own candied lemon peels which turned out fabulous. That icing though, as nice and crisp a texture it gave to the cookies, it was a hot mess and just clumpy and gunky after the first go around with icing. I took the advice of adding in some water to help keep it from clumping and heating it a little more which worked but not for long so I ended up, halfway through icing the cookies, just starting over with a milk and powdered sugar icing, which I think tastes the same just not quite the crispy (if that is even the right word for it) coating like the other. Thank you for sharing this recipe!
Two stars only because the cookies tasted okay in the end, but everything other step was a giant mess. The dough came together okay, but seemed too wet so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when it was still a sticky mess after refrigerating overnight. I think I added at least another 3/4 C of flour trying to roll out the dough. When I finally did get it rolled out, the dough stuck to the knife I was using to try to cut our the squares! I eventually gave up and rolled the dough into balls. I baked the first batch on a silicone mat and even after baking 12 minutes the cookies still stuck to the silicone! The only success I had was a second batch which was baked a bit longer and on parchment paper. After all the work to bake the cookies I couldn’t even think about making a glaze, so I can’t speak to that. For anyone who wants to make this, the flavor is good, but be prepared to add another 1+ cups of flour if you want to make squares and don’t bake on anything other than parchment paper.
my family loved it!! i am only 13 and i have never made these but they turned out to be delicious! my great grandfather especially loved them. i made them for him since he hasn’t had any German food since about 1930 because he imigrated here from Germany. thanks for the recipe!!! ( sorry for any spelling errors)
I love these cookies. Used walnuts and pecans instead of hazelnuts, since I have these on hand. Also substituted cherries for the citron for same reason as the nuts. Other than that I follow the recipe almost as written, and was happy to find my old friend Lebkuchen again after losing the recipe 35 years ago during a move. Thank you for posting this wonderful recipe on your site.
I made the recipe exactly as written! I didn’t find the dough difficult to work with at all, the key is to refrigerate it overnight, and work with small pieces of dough at a time while leaving the remaining dough in the fridge until ready to use. Now, the texture is very good, however, the one thing I will change for the next time I make these is to omit the citron. It really is too sweet and does nothing for the flavor of this cookie at all. I don’t recall there being citron in the type of lebkuchen I ate as a child living in Germany. I didn’t glaze the cookies because they were already very sweet.
a little time consuming
i made these for my opa’s 84th birthday a few weeks ago, and he loved them (so did everyone else, but i wanted to make them special for him since he came over from germany when he was 25). i told him i couldn’t remember the name of them, but when he bit into one, he immediately said, “lebkuchen!” and he said how they reminded him of germany. success! that is exactly what i wanted i made the recipe exactly as stated, but i did do packed cups of flour. also, instead of cookies, i rolled out the dough on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and baked them for 8 minutes. they stayed chewy soft and were REALLY good. i made the mistake of brushing on the sugar syrup over the whole rolled out sheet of cookie (thinking it would save time than brushing each one), but it dries so fast, that when i cut them into bars, the sugar coating cracked all over the place hahaha…still tasted super good! just next time i would take the extra time and brush each cut-out bar. i am going to add a photo to the gallery so you can see what i mean! these were fabulous though, and everyone loved them, especially my german native opa! 🙂
I just finished baking. This recipe is perfect! My intention was to make these now and hide them for Christmas. Well, it did not worked. They taste so good and smell so tempting…. I will make them again for sure!
These came out great. I loved the amount of spices in the cookies. Some things I changed: I made my own candied lemon peel the day before. I also didn’t like the sugar glaze that this recipe uses, as it left my cookies looking glossy and sticky, unlike the frosty and matte I was expecting. I just mixed powdered sugar and warm water to a paste-like consistency and spread it on the cookie. I also dipped the bottom of the cookies in chocolate. I followed another reviewer’s suggestion and put the cookies in a container with an apple slice to soften them up.
My mother gave me this recipe 50 years ago, and I have struggled with the same sticky dough problem. This is my solution. I rolled the dough 1/4 inch thick between two pieces of parchment paper, put it in the freezer, then cut out cookies using cooking shears, leaving the paper on the cookie. Put pieces on parchment paper on a cookie sheet, bake, them peel papers off cookies when done. I like 1 tsp grated lemon peel in the glaze.
I had no problems with the dough. Just make sure it’s really cold and you use lots of flour. Honestly it wasn’t harder than cutouts for me. However the icing was another issue. Must have let it get too hot because it turned hard as a rock soon as I added the powdered sugar. I’ll try to find another recipe that will give me that outer shell I remember. The reason for the 4 stars is that this was a little chewier than I remember as a kid. Still close though
Very nice. My friend gave me some Lebkuchen last year’s Christmas and I’ve always wanted to recreate them. These were nice and the spices were perfect. I love the texture. For me, I kept the batter in a bowl overnight in the fridge and the next day, took out half-tablespoonfuls of batter, rolled it up into a ball, place it on some parchment paper, layered another sheet over it and pressed it flat with the underside of a glass until it’s 1/4 inch thick. Then, I slowly peel off the layer of parchment between the glass and the cookie dough. Not much of a mess. Will definitely make again.
Very good. My German colleagues loved them and want me to try their family recipe here in the states.
Excellent recipe, used it many times. F.Y.I. it is verbatim from a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 60s though…
These are amazing! I followed the recipe exactly, except that I didn’t roll them out but made little 1-inch balls of dough and then pressed them lightly to create little “domes”. Much less hassle! I was at first worried that it they would be too sweet (especially after glazing them in more sugar), but they are perfect! My favourite recipe this season!
These cookies are very tasty. I don’t grease my cookie sheets, I use either parchment or silicone mats. These stuck to my silicone mats. Parchment worked fine. I live in a town with a large military population, and I think I’ll just buy these from the pros at my local german bakery. I only gave them three stars because of the stickiness, taste is a five!