This Lebkuchen Recipe is an essential if you love spiced cookies! Lebkuchen are some of the most popular and well known Christmas cookies in Europe. The spiced cookies are similar to gingerbread cookies from the English speaking countries.
Find the Lebkuchen recipe with step by step recipe instructions and pictures further below.
A Lebkuchen recipe to make Lebkuchen cookies includes spices, honey, nuts and candied fruits.
Lebkuchen are popular and commonly made for Christmas in the German speaking countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
In Austria and Germany you will find them being decorated and sold in the all famous charming Christmas markets such as Salzburg, Vienna and the all famous Nürnberg Christmas market.
Most of the households, preparing for the merry season, usually bake Lebkuchen in all different shapes and sizes.
There are endless different Lebkuchen types and variations. Some are harder some are softer, some include a different Lebkuchen spice mixture and some include secret ingredients.
Today, I am sharing a classic Lebkuchen recipe, which is common in and around the alps. Another very popular Lebkuchen is the Lebkuchen recipe from the city of Nürnberg, the Elisenlebkuchen.
Honey is always included, no matter which lebkuchen recipe!
History tells us that the first Lebkuchen appeared in the medieval period around the city of Ulm, in the region of Bavaria, South Germany. The old city of Nürnberg made the Lebkuchens recipe “honey cake” in the 1500s popular.
Nürnberg is also popular for making some of the best candied fruits in central Europe, as in candied orange peel, which explains how the fruits ended up to be part of the traditional decoration on the Lebkuchen, together with nuts such as almonds.
This Lebkuchen recipe is better used for smaller shapes. That is why this Lebkuchen recipe is not suited for a gingerbread house or for bigger Lebkuchen hearts.
Making this flavorful cookies is a great thing to do with the family. The dough is very well suited for children hands and in fact most children learn to bake with the easy to handle Lebkuchen dough.
For my Gluten-free readers, I can recommend the Elisenlebkuchen recipe.
In my opinion, this is one of the easiest cookies to prepare. I leave the cookie shape choice and decoration up to you. As you can see I made a couple of different ones, so that you get some ideas.
The Lebkuchen cookies are not fully loaded, but if you like them more busy, then feel free to add more decoration with nuts, dried fruits and sugar pearls.
You can color the icing as well with a few drops of food coloring, which you add while making the icing.
You might recall the Grimm brother’s tale of Hänsel and Gretel and the house of the witch. If you are able to envision the Lebkuchen house of the witch, then you might come up with some gorgeous colorful extensive decoration ideas for your own home made Lebkuchens!
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Classic Lebkuchen Recipe – German Christmas Cookies below:
- 150 grams Honey or 7 Tablespoons
- 80 grams brown Sugar or 2.8 oz or 2/5 cup
- 50 grams Butter or 1.7 oz or ¼ cup
- 270 grams All Purpose Flour or 9.9 oz or 2⅛ cups
- 1½ Teaspoon Baking powder
- 1 Egg Yolk
- dash ground Lemon zest
- 130 grams ground Walnuts or 4.6 oz or 1⅕ cup
- 5 Teaspoons store bought Lebkuchen spice mixture or homemade Lebkuchen spice mixture
- 2 Teaspoons Cinnamon powder
- 1 Egg-white
- 200 grams Powdered Sugar or 7 oz or 2 cups
- colorful Sugar decoration such as pearls etc (as shown)
- Candied fruits such as Cherries, ginger candy, orange or lemon candy Orange Candy
- Nuts such as Almonds, Walnuts.
- Place the Honey, brown sugar and butter together into a bowl and melt and mix the ingredients to a smooth sticky paste.
- Once the sticky mixture has cooled a bit add the white flour and baking powder and make a mold to add in your egg yolk. Keep on adding the Lemon zest, the ground walnuts, the Lebkuchen spice mix and the cinnamon powder.
- Mix it all first with a spoon or something and then work it out for 10 minutes into a smooth dough.
- Preheat your oven to a 180 Celsius!
- Flour your working space and roll your dough to a 0.5 millimeter thickness out (don't roll out too thin!) and cut out your shapes with your cookie cutters. Make sure the dough is covered with flour, it's easier that way to cut out the shapes. Once done, dust the shapes a bit so that the extra flour falls off.
- Place the lebkuchen on a baking tray. At this point you can decorate them with nuts and candied fruits by pressing the sweets lightly into the dough.
- Bake smaller sized Lebkuchen cookies for about 15 minutes at 180 Celsius and then let them cool and bigger ones for 20 minutes at 180 Celsius..
- In the mean while, beat your egg white to a stiff snow. Once stiff continue to mix in the powdered sugar into the egg whites, batch by batch. The Icing should be very tough and shiny sticky. (For colored batches just add 2-3 drops of food coloring drops)
- Once the cookies have cooled, you can decorate them with the icing and top them with colorful and pretty looking sugar decorations. Either you pipe a thin line with the icing onto the cookies or you add a thin layer of icing onto the whole cookies surface. Just be creative and have fun!
More Christmas Cookie Recipes: 🍪
- Cinnamon Stars cookies
- Bethmännchen cookies
- Stamped Albertle cookies
More food from these regions: 🍲
Dear Reader, how are you planning to decorate your Lebkuchen cookies?
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Hi Helene,
I love Lebkuchen. They are sold here for special occasions. I loved the history you gave and didn’t know so much of it. Thanks for sharing & Merry Christmas!
ookies looks crispy, crunchy, yummy and fabulous. Feel like having it now.
Love the flavors. We make gingerbread cookies, but don’t use honey – I really like the idea of this. Such good stuff. I hope you have a happy holiday!
Those of us originally from Europe but now long time citizens of Down Under always retain two things for Christmas: black pudding and lebkuchen! Up north we must be very ‘dour’ and ‘boring’ people because we don’t decorate them, just have lots of shapes! May I add my best wishes for ‘Fröhliche Weinachten und alles, alles gute in Neuem Jahr’!
I absolutely liked reading the history behind these cookies. It makes me wonder if I’ve ever had an authentic Lebkuchen. But you’re right, this is very easy to make and look like fun to decorate too 🙂
Wow, I am so behind on your beautiful blog, I am soooooo sorry! I promise to catch up this weekend! I finally made homemade gingerbread cake this year, now I need to make gingerbread cookies! Your recipe looks wonderful, I am looking forward to your other versions of this lovely recipe:-) Hugs, Terra
Mmm. How fun! This reminds me of my grandmother’s cookies! So comforting seeing these recipes my nana used to make!!
Growing up these were the cookies I looked forward to each Christmas. My great-grandmother made them in large batches and sadly didn’t write down the recipe… I’ve been on the search ever since for a similar recipe. Looking forward to trying yours.
Today I learned about one of the best well known Christmas cookies in Europe. Never even heard of em. I know I have seen and eaten them, but did not know what they were.
I remember having something similar when I visited my cousins in Germany! Love these cookies!
I love spiced cookies! I always hunt them out every year since they are not always available and then I hoard them! haha 🙂 I’m happy to have found this so I can make it at home instead! 🙂
Thanks for the great recipe!
These sound fantastic! I have been baking up a storm since December started and these have been added to my baking list. Can’t wait to try them!.
These look so authentic. And I bet they taste delicious. thanks for sharing
I love seeing all the different types of Christmas cookies from around the world! I realize that I’ve only made a handful of them and I need to step up my cookie game! Thanks for the recipe.
I never knew the tip to keep them moist was to put apple slices in them. Now mine won’t get dry!
Apple skin 🙂
Love the history behind these gorgeous Christmas cookies. Christmas cookie making is great to be passed down through the generations. Love how you’ve added a link for gluten free version.
I’ve never made lebkuchen before, but it looks delicious. I can’t wait to try it!
This cookies looks so yummilicious 👌.. lived reading about the history mofnthis cookies!
Since my boys love pretty much everything with sugar, they’ll adore these!! Thanks for such step by step photos to illustrate…they can probably even make these for me!