151 To bake good Lebkuchen

This is a delightful, thin, crispy confection, more candy than cookie, but it does melt on the tongue. It’s best made on a dry weather day and  eaten soon after it is made, otherwise it will go soggy.

 

My translation of ingredients from MHG original

Recipe 151 amounts from MHG original	Recipe in English, original amounts	Original amounts in metric	Orginal amounts in US measurements
ain qúertlin geleúterts honig	One quart of clear honey	0.35696335 liter honey	1.5 cups honey
ain pfúnd zúcker	One pfund sugar	360 g sugar	12.6986 oz sugar
ain fiertellin mell	One viertellin flour	0.200674715 liter	0.85 cups flour
5 lot rerlen	5 loth cinnamon	75 g cinnamon	2.65 oz cinnamon
3 lott negellen	3 pfenning clove	3 g clove	0.11oz clove
4 lott kerner/ gestossen	4 pfenning cardamom	4g cardamom	0.14 oz cardamom
jmber	1 loth ginger *	14.753 ginger	0.52 oz

* There is no measurement for the ginger in either the MHG original or the translations. I used 1 loth (14.753 grams) of ginger as an experiment and it resulted in a good cookie.

 

Armstrong’s translation: 151 To bake good Lebkuchen

Take first a pound of sugar, a quart of clear honey, not quite a third quart of flour, take two and a half ounces of cinnamon, one and a half ounces of cloves, two ounces of cardamom. Cut the other spices as small as possible, the cinnamon sticks are ground as coarsely as possible. Also put ginger therein and put the sugar into the honey, let it cook together, put the flour in a trough, pour the cardamom into it first, afterwards the ginger and the other spices.

 

Reconstruction: 1/2 the original batch size

Ingredients

¾ cup honey

¾ cup sugar

½ cup flour

37.5 grams of cinnamon, ground coarsely

1.5 grams of cloves, ground

2 grams of cardamom seeds, ground

7 grams of ginger, grated

 

In a large ceramic or glass bowl, place flour, ground cardamom, cloves and cinnamon; stir gently.

In a heavy bottomed small sauce pan, place grated ginger, sugar and honey. Stir it well and bring it to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. When it starts to bubble, stir it more often. When mixture starts to get foamy looking, stir constantly. When bubbles are small to medium sized and foamy (candy thermometer reads 180-210) stir for one minute and remove from heat.

Gently pour it into flour and spice mixture, and stir it gently, scraping down sides of bowl. When mixed well, let sit to cool for 15 minutes.

Cover a large cookie sheet with parchment paper.  With flour dusted hands, roll small balls of dough and place them 2-3 inches apart. Cookies will spread while baking so plan accordingly. Let balls of dough cool while oven pre-heats

Pre-heat oven to 275 degrees F.  Bake cookies for 10 minutes, turn pan around, bake for another 10 minutes.

Slide parchment paper with hot cookies off of pan and onto cutting board or smooth heat resistant surface to let cookies cool. After they have cooled completely, in about 30 minutes, you should be able to peel cookies off of paper.

Place cookies between layers of parchment paper in sealed container.