Lebkuchen

I wonder how many people here think of Lebkuchen at Christmas?

Due to genealogical reasons, like many people, I have various different traditions associated with the holiday season.

Lebkuchen are a particularly delicious part of Christmas for me. The original Elisen-Lebkuchen came from Nuremberg. Elisa, Elizabeth, was a nun who had something to do with saving Nuremberg from Swedish (!?) invaders during the Thirty Years War, if I have it right. Nuremberg had a large forest and thus was an important source for honey in Germany. At any rate the Lebkuchen are mainly made of gingerbread. But gingerbread is too soft to make a cookie, so they have this large communion wafer and they put the gingerbread on top of the wafer before baking it. Then they generally coat the whole thing with delicious chocolate. There are often almonds included somehow. It is a complex and delicious taste.

My mother and I went to Germany in 1988 and visited Nürnberg. We went to the Schmidt-Lebkuchen store and got a large bag of "factory seconds." These were pretty incredible and we were working our way through them until we visited some fifth cousins I had found via my genealogical research. They had a 20 year old son and he polished off the bag in no time.

A couple of times including this year I have ordered Lebkuchen from Schmidt. Part of the tradition is that the Lebkuchen are packed in elaborately decorated tins. Sometimes you get maybe six big cookies in something that looks like a coffee can but it has polychrome views of Nuremberg printed on the sides. This year for my neighbors I got a chest that had the image of Gustav Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer which is currently in the Neue Galerie in New York. Beautiful.

I've noticed little six packs of Lebkuchen in local "gourmet" shops. Have you seen them, have you tried them?

F

PS here is the website, beware it is written in "Germlisch"

http://ww2.lebkuchen-schmidt.com/eng_index.php

I've never had it that I'm aware of, but would sure give it a try. None of my ancestors are from that region of Europe, so it's not in my family tree.

It is not good for me to have lebkuchen in my house. Of course, if I do, it isn't there very long.

Frank,

your thread brings back good memories from my childhood, as we received every X-mas a big aluminum box with Lebkuchen by Lebkuchen-Schmidt in the 60s.

Best,
Martin

We get various brand names in the store each Christmas. I absolutely LOVE the stuff!

rwj

My mother used to make Lebkuchen during Christmastime. She also made Springerle using a special rolling pin and cialde using a spcecial purpose iron. And then there were the fruitcakes that would arrive by mail...

Mark Lipton

Mark, everyone knows I like Lebkuchen and so people have tried to make them at Christmas.

On the one hand I appreciate the effort. But on the other hand the texture is all wrong, I've never had a home made cookie that had that special soft gingerbread texture. Generally they would make bars, kind of like brownies, and put in citron which at home often gets hard as a rock before it is used up. The flavors were about right but I never found those very much fun to eat.

I have a feeling your mom did a better job with this than my in-laws did. ??

If I made them I would want to try and get the exact texture. And I would have a problem because I don't have a ready source of large size communion wafers. I think the way these cookies are made is intimately connected with the fact that it was monks and nuns that invented them in the first place.

On second thought -- the Keller Macarons that Louise made a week or 2 ago are made of nut flour (like some Lebkuchen) and are piped onto parchment and baked on it (like the wafers). I think that texture is a little closer, I wonder if the technique is something similar?

F

I have a feeling your mom did a better job with this than my in-laws did. ??

Frank,
As so many authors have observed, memory is a tricky thing, especially at the remove of 30+ years that this one involves. They certainly seemed tender, but I had not then (and still have not now) the standard of Schmidt's to compare them to. They never lasted long in our house, though, FWIW. I must confess, though, that the Spingerle were more coveted by me (I'm a sucker for anise) and the cialde were to die for (also involving anise).

Mark Lipton

Lived a few years as a teenager in Germany, so I learned to love Lebkuchen. And stollen.

Saw lots of varieties of Lebkuchen too. My original were more the powdered gingerbread spice cookies. That, or the ones with a lovely touch of anise in the gewurz mix. Chocolate covered is certainl okay, but I find the chocolate overwhelms the spices more than I like.

The other tradition that I loved---but wouldn't do it myself for anything----is one of my German buddies had a traditionalist Mom who liked to observe the old fashioned Christmases of her family. So she would get a tree, decorate it with tiny, finely crafted silver candleholders, fill them with tiny white candles, and light them up ceremonially each night. Along with the ceremony, we all eagerly awaited the other part of the ritual: when she would bake the plum pies. She would get these incredible, slightly dried out dark purple-black plums, cut them in half, pit them, then place the flesh side up plums in an openfaced pie crust, sprinkle it with sugar and her own secret mix of spices, and bake it.

The smell alone drove us crazy, and the resultant pie was wonderful. Up til then I had never had plum in a pie (we were more blackberry cobbler people). Fell in love with it instantly.

Later, I loved going to the Kaufhof in Frankfurt (the big department store at the time) and sitting in the rooftop restaurant and having the most incredible cheesecake, usually with a lemon paste that was studded with freshly grated lemon zest.

And much, much later, when I married into a Scandinahoovian-German family in Wisconsin, we had the unbreakable Sunday tradition of kringle rings. Wasn't Sunday without a fresh Kringle to clog up every blood vessel in your body. for the day.

Much, much, much later I enjoyed the discover of first, panettone (and the wonderful variety by region thereof) and then the truly awesome panforte. First, with panforte di Siena, then with every other variation I could find. The best, oddly enough, was a short-lived version made by some woman in Seattle, now sadly long out of artisanal business.