Ingredients

250g / 9oz / 1¾ cups plus 1tbsporganic

plain flour

85g

/ 3oz / ¾ cup organicground almonds

2½tsp

Steenbergs organic lebkuchen spice mix*

1tsp

baking powder

½tsp

bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

175ml/ ¾ cup

clear honey(or golden syrup)

85g/ 3oz

softened unsalted butter

½tbsp

lemon juice(this is lemon from ½ lemon)

lemon, finely grated zest (or combine to 1 lemon zested)

orange, finely grated zest

Some flaked or half blanched almonds (optional)

For the icing:

100g/ 4oz / 1 cup

icing sugar (confectioners’ sugar)

egg white, beaten

These lebkuchen are delicious and light and didn't last long in our household. I think it would work well with a light chocolate glaze as an alternative to the icing sugar glaze but I need to invest in some better cookie cutters for next year!

Method

Sieve the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
Warm the honey and butter in a pan over a low heat until the butter melts, then pour these into the flour mixture. Add the lemon juice and lemon & orangezest. Mix well with a hand held whisk until the dough is throughly combined. Cover and leave to cool overnight, or for at least 2 hours. to let the flavours meld together and work that festive magic.
Heat oven to 180C/ 350F / Gas Mark 4.
Roll the lebkuchen dough in your hands into around25 balls, each 3cm wide (1 inch wide), then flatten each one slightly into a disc. Into the centre of the discs, place an almond flake.
Divide the lebkuchen mixture between 3 baking trays lined with baking parchment, or ideally with an edible baking paper, with a decent amount of room for them to expand into.
Bake for 13 – 15 mins, or until when touched lightly no imprint remains, then cool on a wire rack. While still warm, glaze the lebkuchen with the icing glaze, made as below.
While the cookies are baking, make your glazing icing: mix together the icing sugar andegg white to form a smooth, runny icing.
Brush the top of each biscuit with the glazing icing. Leave to dry out. I then glazed the top of the icing to give the lebkuchen a shinier lustre, but this is optional.
For the glaze, I took 100g (½ cup) caster sugar and 50ml (¼ cup) of water, melting these in a pan. Then, I boiled the mix to 90C/200F, when I added 15g (1 tablespoon) of icing sugar. This glaze was then bushed over the icing. Granted that it is extra fussy, but then it is Christmas.
You should ideally, allow these Christmas cookies to mellow. To do this, you should store the lebkuchen in an airtight container for a day or two to allow the flavours to mellow and the cookies to become softer. To improve the flavours, you could include a few pieces of sliced orange or lemon, but make sure that they are not touching the lebkuchen as this will make them soggy and change the fruit every day to stop them going stale or mouldy.