{"id":11233,"date":"2015-11-10T23:06:23","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T04:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/?page_id=11233"},"modified":"2015-11-14T09:53:23","modified_gmt":"2015-11-14T14:53:23","slug":"basler-leckerli","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/recipes\/basler-leckerli\/","title":{"rendered":"Basler Leckerli"},"content":{"rendered":"

I signed up to test a cookie recipe for Food52 – Basler Leckerli<\/a>, a Swiss or German bar cookie. It’s a lot like the Joy of Cooking Lebkuchen that I make every year – honey-sweetened dough, with blanched almonds, spices, and candied peel. A little bit of rum or kirsch. Whiteish glaze on top.<\/p>\n

\"Lebkuchen\"<\/a>

Lebkuchen<\/p><\/div>\n

There’s a recipe for Basler Lackerli in the December 1994 Gourmet<\/em>, and they’re on the cover – they’re the rectangles above my thumb. I’ve made all of the next three rows. The Biberli, little wedges of gingerbread with marzipan inside are one of my favorites, and the cinnamon-almond star cookies, that are gluten-free \u2013 Zimmetstern. I’ve even made the\u00a0 chocolate heart ones – but for Valentine’s day, not Christmas.<\/p>\n

\"gourmet94\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Food52 recipe<\/a> has a nice story, abut how the author got it from a former boyfriend’s German mother, and still cherishes the cookies, though the boyfriend’s long gone. It’s different from all the other similar recipes I’ve seen, in that it has eggs.** I think there’s way too much glaze – the Gourmet recipe calls for 1\/4 cup of sugar, 1 TBLS water, and 1 TBLS powdered sugar, poured on and brushed until the glaze is white and crystallized. The Food52 recipe calls for 3\/4 cup of sugar and 1\/2 cup water, and says to “shower” the glaze on. It also says to start the glaze a few minutes before the cookies go into the oven – wrong. the glaze only has to cook about 15 minutes, and my cookies had to bake about 25 (though the recipe says 12-18 – that must be if you roll them really thin. My first batch of glaze turned into a solid lump of hard sugar before I could get it onto the cookies. The other anomaly is decorating each piece with an almond – they seem usually to be plain. It’s also not completely necessary to roll the dough out – you could pat it into the pan, as the Gourmet recipe suggests, or, use this nifty roll IN the pan method<\/a>. I actually thought of it, too, and tried it, using the rolling pin to get the dough out the edges of the pan, but my rolling pin is too long.<\/p>\n

Here’s the headnote I sent with my tester comments, we’ll see if I get published.<\/p>\n

This recipe promised to transport me to the land of Snow White, but instead I found myself still in my own kitchen on a Tuesday night at 10:30, with an over-abundance of crusted sugar to clean up. It comes with a nice story – a traditional recipe, passed down from the German mother of the author’s ex-boyfriend. My German grandma baked a lot of cookies, but not Basler Leckerli, so I turned to other recipe sources: Joy of Cooking and Gourmet. After testing, I find I prefer those other sources, that might lack a family connection, but taste better.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like the following picture I found, from a Web Services company called Namics<\/a>. It’s from an online advent calendar<\/a>, with pictures of their staff and recipes for appropriate Christmas foods. A giant Basler Lackerli in the shape of a Roman numeral two, no almonds and hard white glaze, is being bitten into by Raphael Joss, senior project manager.<\/p>\n

\"02_gr\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The recipe:<\/p>\n

\"namicsleckerli\"<\/a><\/p>\n