Nürnberger Lebkuchen

Dear all,

We are gearing up for Christmas. I hope you look forward to the holidays with joyful expectations. If not, maybe you could take some time out to contemplate what is going wrong with your life. The end of a year and the start of a new one is a great time to take an inventory and check what makes us happy and what we can omit.

For me, the past year has been an exciting one with many ups and quite a few downs as well. I believe, the way we face problems shows the stuff we are made of. If we tend to be too fluffy, we can toughen up. If we are too brittle, we can mellow down.

Remember, happiness starts in your own mind. I dare say I am entitled to vent my opinion about this subject. A few weeks ago, I finished writing my new cookbook with the working title Cooking for Happiness and I am looking forward to see it in print in 2015. Unfortunately, writing is only part of the story, then comes editing and editing… But let’s not jump ahead, let’s enjoy the spirit of Christmas.

For the last newsletter of this year I have chosen a traditional German Christmas sweet, Nürnberger Lebkuchen. I have grown up in Ansbach, a small town close to Nürnberg, a city famous for its Christmas market (see the title picture). Christmas without Lebkuchen would have been unthinkable. I tried my hand this year at the queen of Lebkuchen, the Elisenlebkuchen, thanks to my dear mother who sent me her recipe.

Lebkuchen are largely made from nuts, sugar and candied orange and lemon rind, as described in my November newsletter. The common Lebkuchen also contains flour, but the Elisenlebkuchen does away with the wheat and is made only from almonds, hazelnuts, sugar, eggs, spices and citrus rinds.

Normally, the Lebkuchen dough is spread over a base called oblaten, round, paper like wavers. These wavers guarantee that the Lebkuchen does not stick to the cookie sheet. As you cannot get oblaten in India, I have used a thickly buttered silicon sheet and cut the Lebkuchen after baking in diamond shaped pieces.

Unfortunately, here in Goa, India, it is also very difficult to find hazelnuts. That’s why I substituted the hazelnuts with almonds. The Lebkuchen taste slightly different, but still delicious. For my chocoholic men I coated them with chocolate, but you can also leave them plain or cover them with icing sugar mixed with a tiny bit of water or rum.

Wishing you wonderful holidays and happy cooking, always!

Kornelia Santoro with family
 

Nürnberger Lebkuchen

Ingredients:
(for one cookie sheet, around 45 pieces)

• 250 grams almonds
• 2 eggs
• 200 grams sugar
• 75 grams candied orange and/or lemon rind
• 1 tablespoon vanilla essence
• 1 tablespoon rum
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 100 grams chocolate for coating

Method:
Grind the almonds and the citrus rinds. Mix the almonds with the baking powder.

Because I don’t like to bite on pieces of citrus rinds, I chop them to a paste in my mini blender. If you don’t mind more texture in your Lebkuchen, just chop the citrus rinds roughly.

Prepare the cookie sheet. I have used my trusted silicone-baking sheet that I covered generously with butter. You can omit the silicone sheet; just make sure that you spread plenty of butter over your cookie sheet because the dough is extremely sticky. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl. Beat them and gradually add the sugar until you have a thick cream.

Add the rum, the vanilla essence, the cinnamon, the cloves, the citrus rinds and the ground almonds. You should have thick, sticky dough that you can spread out.

Pour the Lebkuchen dough onto your cookie sheet and spread it out evenly. It should be very thin, about three millimetres or so. I have flattened the dough first with a spatula and then evened it out with a knife dipped in water.

Bake the Lebkuchen for around 40 minutes, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. They should turn a little bit brown around the edges and they should not feel sticky any more when you touch the surface. I gave them five extra minutes from the grill in my gas oven to ensure that the surface is well done.

When you remove them from the oven, you have to work fast. Slide the sheet of Lebkuchen onto a flat surface and cut them immediately. You only have a window of a few minutes before they toughen up while cooling down.

Let the diamonds cool down. If you want, melt the chocolate in a double boiler (a small pot stuck into a bigger one with some water) and cover the Lebkuchen with the chocolate.

I used a knife to spread the molten chocolate like a sandwich spread. Enjoy!