Brown Lebkucken

     Brown Lebkucken.... A German Christmas treat, similar to gingerbread. Hmmm. I was interested in this recipe mostly because of the measurements, and it's old and again deceptively simple. The ingredients are easily acquired, but expensive, and citron doesn't seem to be readily available year 'round in my neck of the woods. So I left it out, because I don't like it anyway.
     The recipe doesn't say anything about baking, so my first step was to Google "lebkucken".
      It appears there are several different kinds, both white and brown. My minimal amount of research turned up the information that brown lebkucken doesn't necessarily have citron and almonds, and that it isn't necessarily baked. White lebkucken is more likely to have citron and almonds and more likely to be baked.

 3/4 of a quart of honey

1/2 lb of sugar

1 1/2 oz of cinnamon

1/2 oz of cloves

1/4 of citron

1/2 lb of almonds

Enough flour to roll out nicely

Icing

 3/4 of a quart of honey, or 3 cups.

I used Ambrosia, a Colorado brand of raw honey that has a fairly strong flavor.

 1/2 pound of sugar, or 1 1/8 cups

 1/2 oz of cinnamon and 1/2 oz of cloves (because I only just now realized that I needed more cinnamon). So it should have been 3 tbs of cinnamon and 1 tbs of cloves.

 

 Enough flour to roll out nicely, which turned out to be at least 5 1/2 cups and even that may not have been enough.

 

This dough is fairly stiff, but still a little sticky.

 Rolled out to about 1/2 inch thick. I had no idea. The recipe says cut into card-sized pieces, but...

...I thought it would be nice to cut it into shapes 

 

Wonky shapes

Icing:
I poured some milk in a bowl, added about a teaspoon of vanilla, and added powdered sugar until it was icing consistency, not too runny, but able to drizzle.

I then drizzled the icing on the raw cookies and sprinkled almonds on.

    Not knowing whether or not they were to be baked, because the recipe said ice while soft, I guessed that perhaps they hardened after awhile. Two hours later, they were getting softer and sticking to the wax paper and sort of losing their shape. So, I decided to bake them. I preheated the oven to 350 and baked them for 10 minutes. The first batch already had the icing and the almonds on, and when I transferred them from the wax paper to the parchment paper, the lost their shape even more. But even with the icing on, they didn't bake up too bad. I had enough dough to make another batch, so I cut it into squares and baked it the same, then drizzled the icing on and put the almonds on. All in all, I would say this is not a bad a recipe. The lebkucken has a very strong flavor as a result of the large amount of cinnamon and cloves and the raw honey. I will probably never know if it was really to be baked or not, but I don't see how it would have kept for any length of time uncooked. It was the consistency of cookie dough and wouldn't have been inedible raw, as there are no eggs in it, but it wasn't very appetizing.

     If anyone can read this, will you tell me what it says?

 

Doughnuts

     My first foray into Grandma's recipes involved doughnuts. But first I want to show you a picture of the box in which I found my treasures:

     I thought I would choose this recipe, because it looked fairly straightforward.

     It's written in pencil on the back of a blanket tag. My first question was in what should I fry the doughnuts? I wanted to be as authentic as possible and my three choices seemed to be vegetable oil, shortening, or lard. Of course, I went with lard. My next mission was to find some lard. I wasn't actually sure that they still sold lard, as it seems to be somewhat un-PC as far as ingredients go, being unhealthy and all. But I remember as a kid, seeing red boxes of REX lard in the refrigerator section, over by the bacon, so that was my first stop. I didn't see any lard. I spotted the meat department guy and asked him if he carried lard. He looked at me funny. I explained to him I was making an old recipe and thought perhaps I ought to have some lard. He said to look over by the shortening and oil, which idea I pooh-poohed because I thought, being an animal product, lard ought to be refrigerated. Convinced then, that I was going to have to settle for shortening, I went to get a can and look what I found!

     Alright then. I got home and was eager to try this recipe. DOUGHNUTS!!!

     I put about three LARGE spoonfuls of lard in my dutch oven to melt while I mixed the other ingredients. Melted, it equaled about three inches of lard.

 

I then started adding ingredients to Grandma's big yellow bowl.

 1/2 cup sugar

 

2 egg (sic)

1 cup milk

4 level teaspoon B Powder (sic)

Enough flower (sic) to make it thick (I tried about 2 1/3 cups)

  Fry

I dropped by tablespoonful into the hot lard and as they turned golden on one side they turned themselves over. Unfortunately...

 they became quite brown rather quickly but were still doughy in the middle. So I dropped them by smaller spoonfuls and...

they still turned quite brown, but got done in the middle. I dusted them with sugar. They didn't taste too bad, though there was a definite hint of lard. I recommend vegetable oil or shortening. They tasted much better fresh. The next morning they were a little soggy and dry...don't ask how that works, it just is.... Definitely would have been more edible dunked in coffee.

And in case you eat too many of them:

 Here's a recipe that might help that...

(oops, got them backwards on the scanner...).

 

      My Grandma Weinant passed away in 2005 at the age of 95. Her house was full of nooks and crannies which were, in turn, full of things. Some of these things were precious, and some, not so much. We spent days sorting and cleaning and sharing out treasures. I became the proud owner of antique dishes, antique furniture, jewelry (some precious, some just questionable), and a myriad of knick-knacks, sewing items, old bobby pins, and canning jars, to name a few things.
      My Grandma lost her mother when she was 9 years old. Her father was devastated, and Grandma, along with her sisters and brothers, essentially became an orphan. She had a grandmother that she loved, but she spent many of her growing-up years living with one family or another until she got married at the age of 15. She and my grandpa were married for 70 years.
      My great grandparents were sheepherders and ran a sawmill in the mountains of western Colorado. Grandma graduated from the 8th grade. She met my grandpa and when his mother told him he better not kiss her unless he intended to marry her, he promptly kissed her.  Grandpa tried his hand at a few things, including working in the orchards, until he settled on the grand career of Cowpoke. He became the foreman of the Stirrup Bar ranch and he took to cowboying like a duck to water. He was a consummate cowboy and remained so until long after he could no longer ride a horse.
     My grandma had a zest for life and could make doing laundry and preserving vegetables sound like the grandest of adventures. She had my older brother and I fighting over who got the privilege of mowing the lawn with the push lawn mower. We had tea parties and a Kool-aid stand out in the middle of nowhere, up in the mountains.
     Among the most precious things I inherited from my grandma, besides the antique buttons and the value that anything can be fun, if you have the right attitude, was most of her collection of recipes. My grandma was a good cook, her food was rich and full of cream and butter. It included venison and beef roasts, shepherd's pies, homemade cinnamon rolls, and cheese sandwiches made with Velveeta. Her recipes range from potluck casseroles to old country recipes from my grandpa's side of the family. In the old box of loose recipes, I found recipes for soap, liniment, wine, and the cover and a few pages of an old Fannie Farmer cookbook.
     For a large portion of her life Grandma cooked on a wood stove. While I don't have a wood stove, I have cooked on one, and it is an art. My mission is to now try these recipes in a modern kitchen. Perhaps not the soap, or the liniment, maybe not even the wine, but the tea cakes and casseroles, white cakes and muffins, perhaps even the recipes written in German, of which I speak not a lick. This blog will be a log of my experiences.