Lebkuchen

It's Christmas. Yes! For me it's the best time of year for food. We already a Harvey Nichol's Christmas pudding, M&S gingerbread cream (like Bailey's, but better), a pannetone from a wonderful Italian deli in Montpelier, winter spiced nuts and a special tin of biscuits. 

So, I felt in the mood for some Christmas baking. My brother is getting married in February and I've spent the last couple of weeks creating the wedding invitations, so things have been a little bit hectic (I will post more on that at a later date). I thought a little baking would probably be just what I needed and I'm a huge fan of lebkuchen, so figured I should try making my own. There are tons of lebkuchen recipes on the internet and they vary quite a lot, so picking one was difficult. I settled on one from The Pink Whisk blog in the end. Just in case you don't know or aren't from the UK, then The Pink Whisk is written by Ruth Clemens, who was a runner-up in the first series of BBC's The Great British Bake Off.

The dough has to rest overnight, at least, so I made it on Wednesday and baked on Friday. You can keep it in the fridge for upto three days, to let the flavours develop. It was pretty tricky, cutting out the shapes, as the dough was extremely sticky. I popped the rolled-out dough (inbetween two sheets of greaseproof paper) in the freezer to firm up while each batch was baking. I used the recipe's glaze, with some lemon juice, on half of the lebkuchen and drizzled chocolate on the rest.

I'm fairly pleased with the results. The texture is right, but they're not as dark or rich as the ones I normally buy. There's a definite gingerbread taste to them, so they're not awful by any means. I get the feeling I might have to try several recipes to find the perfect lebkuchen. I'm sure I'll have help eating the experiments though....