📷 · Nuremberg Nürnberger Lebkuchen photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/charley1965/, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Dessert · Germany · Nuremberg

Nürnberger Lebkuchen 🍪

Name: Nürnberger Lebkuchen
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 2-4 servings
Cuisine: German
Ingredients: 250 g honey; 100 g sugar; 100 g candied orange peel, finely diced; 250 g ground almonds or hazelnuts; 100 g plain flour + 50 g rye flour; 1 tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp cloves, ½ tsp nutmeg, pinch cardamom (or 2 tsp Lebkuchengewürz); 1 tsp potash (Hirschhornsalz) or ½ tsp baking soda, dissolved in 2 tbsp water; Zest of 1 lemon; Icing: 200 g powdered sugar; lemon juice; rice paper or wafer squares underneath

Protected by EU law as a confection of Nuremberg's old town: soft, almost cake-like discs spiced with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, leavened with potash the way the city's bakers have done since the 13th century, and rested a full week under icing so the spice mellows into something closer to gingerbread's gentler older sibling.

Franconia German ⏱ 50 min Easy

Method

1

Warm honey and sugar just until liquid — do not boil. Stir in nuts, peel, spices and zest; cool 15 minutes.
2

Add flours and the leavening water; mix into a stiff, sticky dough. It will look wrong. This is normal — Lebkuchen dough is handled wet.
3

Cover and rest at least 24 hours (traditionally a week in a cool cellar) so the harsh spice edge rounds off.
4

Wet your hands, shape ping-pong discs on wafer squares on a tray, leaving gaps; they spread. Oven 175 °C, 15–18 minutes, until puffed and matte.
5

While still warm, brush with the thin sugar-juice icing so it soaks into a glossy glaze rather than a hard shell. They keep for weeks in a tin — if they last that long.

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Nürnberger Lebkuchen 🍪

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