Lebkuchen, german christmas cookies

Ingredients

Wet Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup honey
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter (melted)
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons apricot jam

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups all purpose unbleached flour
• 1/2 cup ground almonds (coarse ground)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Lemon Glaze:

• (simply stir to combine, remove any lumps)
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons lemon juice

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Preparation

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• In a large bowl combine the wet ingredients. I usually melt the butter in a bowl and then put the honey in. Since my home is fairly cold if necessary I gently warm the honey in a pan of simmering water or in the microwave. The warm butter helps smooth out the honey. As long as your mixture is still lukewarm you can combine the remaining wet ingredients and stir to combine.
• Combine dry ingredients, not including 1 cup of the flour. (You will mix this in last) Stir everything together until smooth in consistency. Once your mixture is smooth stir in the remaining one cup of flour. It will be somewhat stiff., stiffer if you did not use preserves.
• Using a cookie dough disher scoop even mounds of cookie dough onto a lined baking sheet, about an inch or so apart. They do not really spread that much. Bake 8-10 minutes and remove from the oven. Do this with all of the cookies until no dough remains.
• Allow them to cool slightly before transferring to a cooling rack. You can ice them once they are fully cooled or you can dry them out.
• To glaze them I simply mixed up the glaze and dipped the rounded side of each cookie into the glaze. Swirl it slightly to let excess glaze drip off and flip right side up onto the drying rack. Allow to dry fully before packaging.
• To Dehydrate/dry: I dried mine out by setting my oven to 100 degrees. Place the cookies on cooling racks in an even layer and put in the oven overnight or about 8 hours.