Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen is a type of gingerbread made in Nuremberg. They’re usually round cookies with a wafer base and coated with glaze or chocolate. They’re terrific. When my sister lived in Germany, she would include Lebkuchen in birthday packages. Since then we’ve found them locally in a few stores. For example Trader Joe’s carries Lebkuchen at Christmas time.

By the way, my German never was very good but when I first heard of Lebkuchen I thought that the word translated to something like “love cake”. Since the cookies can sometimes be heart-shaped, this made sense to me. But that should be “Liebekuchen”. According to the Nuremberg web site the name probably stems from “libum” the Latin for a flat, round unleavened cake.