How To Make Lebkuchen Christmas Tree Decoration

So, I’ve been baking all week last week to get the recipe right for this year’s Christmas tree decoration. I’ve decided to make cookie ornaments this year, completely toddler friendly, if Bobcat gets his hands on them and takes a bite – no problemo, it’s just cookies. But if you have a dog or older children, you might want to keep them at bay not clearing the Christmas tree of its decorations.

Oh, and the gorgeous smell of the freshly baked cookies will fill your house for days giving you an extra benefit for your efforts!

What is Lebkuchen?

Lebkuchen is a traditional German Christmas cookie, similar to ginger bread. It’s spicy, and normally comes with sugar icing on the top. These sweet treats were invented by German monks hundreds of years ago. They are are traditional Christmas cookies made with honey, spices, nuts and sometimes candied fruit. 

Find my recipe for the Lebkuchen (German honey and ginger cookie) here: Christmas Lebkuchen Recipe

Decorating with Lebkuchen

These simple, easy yet totally out of Winter Wonderland ornaments will not only look good as Christmas tree decorations but will make the entire house smell like Christmas in just a few hours! 

All you need to do is, poke a little hole into the cookies and with nice ribbons or jute string you can hang them up then they are baked and decorated. Icing is a great way to embellish them but adding nuts (almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts) or candied fruit into the freshly cut cookies making nice patters with them is also very common.

Methods for decorating the cookies base

Home-made sugar paste

Easier than you think. Put some icing sugar into a small bowl, pour very little water on it and stir. Keep adding more water depending how thick paste you want. For dipping, the watery paste is better, but for snow-white writing quality icing you need to add less water making the mixture thicker. Then ladle it into a clean plastic food zip bag and cut a tiny hole off one corner. This is the cheapest possible option to create your own icing pipe. You can also perfectly determinate the size of the hole. I then used some edible white pearl and bronze sprinklers too.

Ready to roll icing

I used Ready To Roll White Icing and I was very happy with it, so easy to use! With Christmas themed decorating cutters I made cut outs from the thinly rolled icing and stick them on the Lebkuchens with edible glue.

To cut a hole into the cookies so that I can hang them on the tree I used a simple paper drinking straw at around half way through the 10 minutes baking time. To hang them on the tree I used silk ribbon pieces, in festive red and green colour.

The preparation is very easy, the baking takes little time too, so I can recommend it as a children Christmas preparation activity, the decoration is good fun and it makes very little mess.

Lebkuchen Recipe

Christmas Lebkuchen (Honey And Ginger Cookie) Recipe

Christmas Lebkuchen (German Honey And Ginger Cookie) Recipe

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

resting time 1 hour hr

Total Time 10 minutes mins

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, European, Eastern-European, german, Hungarian

Ingredients

  

• 250 g plain flour
• 100 g honey
• 80 g butter or margarine
• 100 g ground almond
• 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 orange zested
• 2 orange slices juiced

For the icing

• 120 g icing sugar
• 2-3 tbsp water

Instructions

 

• For the cookies:

  Weigh out all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl.

  Add the orange zest and squeeze the juice out of two orange slices by hand. Melt the honey end the butter in a pan over low heat and pour the mixture over the dry ingredients.

  Start mixing by hand. If it’s too sticky for some reason add more flour. If it’s too dry and you notice big cracks when you’re kneading the dough, add some more honey and butter combo or more orange juice.

  Let it cool down a little, I normally put it in the fridge for an hour.

  Roll it out and cut the cookies with your preferred cutter. I cut holes into them with the help of a regular plastic drinking straw, for hanging them.

  Preheat oven to 175C and place the cookies on the baking tray covered with baking paper. Bake them for 10 minutes and they should be ready. They burn very easily, be careful. If the cookies are thicker, you can add 3-5 minutes more to the baking time.

  For the icing:

  The typical ratio is approximately 1 cup of sugar (120g) to 2-3 tablespoons of water.

  Mix icing sugar with water in a bowl until you get the desired thickness of the sugar paste. If you’re just dipping the cookies, a weak and watery icing will do it. If you want to  decorate the cookies with writing, make the paste thicker.
  

Keyword Christmas Lebkuchen, Lebkuchen

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