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Seven cookies feed a multitude!

CAUTION! These cookies are very hard and may be hazardous to your teeth.

This is just a modern recipe for Lebkuchen, a syrup-dough cookie, with all the modern ingredients left out. Although sugar was known in medieval times, it arrived via the same trade routes as spices, and was thus too expensive except for spice-like uses. For sweetening, one used honey. Similarly, flour was sometimes sifted to produce a white flour, but this was more expensive than common folk could afford. Use white flour if you are feeling Noble, whole-wheat if you aren't. Interestingly enough, the cookies come out far harder if you use white flour. As far as is known, leavening was either with yeast or with eggs: baking soda and baking powder did not yet exist as items of commerce. As this recipe has neither yeast nor eggs, it is entirely unleavened. The pepper and ginger combination is just one possibility for spicing. Try adding (or substituting) ground coriander seed, nutmeg, cinnamon, or whatever.

To make about four dozen cookies:

Warm the honey, butter, and spices in a saucepan until the butter melts. Stir in the flour, then turn the mixture out on a floured surface and briefly knead it into a cohesive dough, adding as much more flour as needed to make a stiff but rollable consistency. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to the thickness of thick piecrust -- about 3/16 inch thick. Cut into strips an inch wide, then cut 2-1/2 inch long cookies from the strips.

Dredge the bottoms of the cookies in flour, and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Make sure there is plenty of flour on the bottoms, otherwise they may strongly adhere to the cookie sheet. Because they hardly expand at all during baking, they can be placed fairly close together. Teflon cookie sheets are not recommended as these cookies tend to pull the Teflon off.

Bake at 350° for about 15 minutes, or until somewhat browner than the unbaked dough. Cool, then brush the excess flour off the bottoms.

The cookies should be stored in an airtight container. If a raw apple slice is placed in the container with them, they will soften in a few weeks or months. While they are new, they are very hard and must be eaten carefully to avoid dental damage. Try dunking, or holding them in your mouth to soften. There must be some limit to their shelf-life, but that limit is long and unknown.

Recipe by Dick Jones <ARichardJ at aol.com>.

Last modified: Saturday, 26-May-2007 18:09:50 MDT by john wilkes.
Images © Copyright 1998, 2003 John Wilkes.

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