Gingerbread Lane

    Last year I was wandering around the internet and found several sites that discussed the German Nurnberger Lebkuchen - or - the German gingerbread whose recipe is a state secret. This gingerbread recipe is so special it's a state secret!  Well. 
    I kept reading and discovered there are dozens of versions of this cookie publicly out there, all just a little different.  I thought it was kind of like trying to hack into Mrs. Fields' chocolate chip cookie recipe, or Kentucky Fried Chicken's coating, or something like that.
    As I read the recipes I realized there were things I'd never heard of:  Oblaten wafers, Lebkuchen Gewurz, hirschhornsalz.  I contacted my friend Elke in Germany and asked if she knew about these things.  "Of course!" she said, and she sent her recipe for Lebkuchen to try this year. And while Australia Jenny was here a few weeks ago a package arrived from Elke with the spices and hirschhornsalz.  Hirschhornsalz, it turns out, is deerhorn salt.  According to Google translate this is ground deerhorn and used as a leavening.  Hm...    I also asked Google to translate the names on the spice envelopes in the package and discovered they are just what I have in my own cupboard: nutmeg, cinnamon, allpsice, etc. 
    Well, the Nurnberger recipe, the one I chose anyway, had candied orange and lemon peel and I was told I simply MUST make my own.  So, ok.

 I spent a morning doing that. The house smelled wonderful, by the way.

    The recipe also said to grind my own hazelnuts and almonds into a size they didn't specify.  I don't care much for hazelnuts so used just almonds and ground them till they wanted to congeal but I didn't let them.
   I think I was ready.
   Oh, the Oblaten Wafers?  If you are Catholic, they're like communion wafers but big.  Or, if you are Catholic and of Eastern European tradition: Polish, Lithuanian, etc., they are exactly like oplatek, the wafers we share on Christmas Eve. The Oblaten wafers are meant to hold the cookie batter in place, giving the batter something to hang on to and not spread across the cookie sheet.

 Not.
    You can just see a piece of the Oblaten peeking out from the cookie on the bottom row second from right.

    After they are cooled spread them with chocolate and put three almonds on top.
Verdict?  The were delicious but soft and the Oblaten made them very chewy.  When I gave one to PH to taste his only response was, "What is that??" meaning the Oblaten.  They are supposed to be cakey, I think, but certainly these didn't turn out thick and high (the picture suggested like a whoopie pie would be.)  I think they were way too much trouble.  I'll let Nurnberg keep their state secret.  But I DO have a jar of yummy citrus simple syrup in the freezer now, thanks to the orange and lemon peels.


We move on to Elke's recipe.  After a long time sitting at Google again, trying to make sense of grams to ounces, I got going on her recipe.  Elke's recipe also called for ground almonds (she said hazelnuts, but there's that taste issue again), and I didn't know what she meant by " a packet of lemonade and a packet of orange peel"  so I went back to the candied orange and lemon peel I had left from the Nurnberger recipe.  I ground them up very fine but I think between the nuts and the peel you can see them floating in the dough.
     I also had to taste that deerhorn salt after reading what it is and how it acts.  It has an ammonia taste. It was strong enough that I could taste it on my tongue for a long time after. 

 This dough is dark because Elke's recipe has cocoa in it.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with chocolate and gingerbread!

 I liked these a lot.  They baked up with a soft texture but more firm than the Nurnberger recipe. I like that they aren't sweet.  I'm drawn to European recipes because they aren't over sweet like our recipes are. I think we don't even taste the sugar but when it isn't there it is noticeable.Even Australia Jenny commented "There's sugar in everything here!  Even your bread has lots of sugar in it."  The chocolate is subtle. 
But!  This was an unusual recipe for me, (and one I would do again but will ask Elke what a lemonade and orange peel packet is,)  because after the dough is mixed it sits in a bowl in a cool place for 14 days!  THEN bring it out bake with it!  The spices need to work but more importantly that hirschhornsaltz needs to work as the leavener. I put it in the garage.


OK, so, this morning I went back home.  I brought out MY recipe for gingerbread cookies.
    Our daughter made these for Thanksgiving and I wanted to keep eating them.  They tasted so good and were soft, not crisp.  She said it's my recipe but she used molasses instead of honey.
     I never liked molasses until about 10 years ago.  I always substituted honey when a recipe called for molasses.  Now, given the choice,  I would choose a molasses cookie over a chocolate chip cookie.  Our tastes change and I don't have the sweet tooth I used to have. 
    Since this was day 14 and so bake day for Elke's dough I decided to complete my gingerbread project with my own.

 I like to make them small.  This star shape makes a one bite pop it in your mouth cookie.  Sometimes all you want is one bite so I make this size a lot.

 Again, there is absolutely nothing not to like about gingerbread and chocolate and I learned many years ago not to decorate with tons of frosting (when we were kids our mom didn't frost our cupcakes because we kids didn't like the frosting and after she watched us scrape it off and into the garbage she just stopped putting the frosting on.) 

I like the less sweet taste and so,

 One simple chocolate dot is just enough.

All in all east, west home is best!  And after a morning steeped in baked gingerbread spices it smells really good in here.

The project was interesting. Maybe not as interesting as boning a turkey, but interesting all the same.   Yes, I would make Elke's recipe again after a little clarification on ingredients and getting a kitchen scale that measures in grams (or measures at all!) I liked the texture of her recipe and the fact it wasn't sweet but the subtle chocolate flavor was really nice.
    My cookies are what we think of when we think of a gingerbread cookie but without the frosting. They are what we expect and think of when offered a gingerbread cookie.