Lovely Lebkuchen

Christmas is coming up and what better way to celebrate if not by tasting some typical, seasonal cake? For once, let’s forget about Italian panettone and pandoro and let’s move North, beyond the Alps, where we can taste a typical cookie, namely Lebkuchen. Known in Italy as panpepato, lebkuchen is a typical German round cake, prepared with dried fruit (walnuts, almonds) and marzipan, and usually (though not always) covered in chocolate.

Without indulging in the details of the recipe for this biscuit, though we understand that the necessary spices include, among others, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, pimento, mace and ginger, there’s more than one kind of lebkuchen, as the people of Weissenstadt say. In this city in Bavarian Franconia, one of the most ancient artisanal producers of this Teutonic speciality is located, that is to say Leupoldt. With a story that goes back to the early years of the last century, Leupoldt is still a family run business. Mr Adam, sided by his energetic wife Laura, originally from Trieste, controls each step of the production, carefully choosing the raw materials, mostly organic, and venturing into new projects.

An example of this is given by the recent concept store in Weissenstadt, created next to the workshop, a place where you can eat or buy all the products manufactured by this enterprise: from spiced biscuits (including a gluten free version) to biscuits, and whole-wheat (and rye) bread, which has been produced under the Pema brand since the Fifties. To tell the truth, Leupoldt’s luck is mostly based on the great success that it received, in the first years after its birth, thanks to a product that is still very popular nowadays. This is Soßenkuchen, a sort of ginger bread used as a thickener when preparing meat sauces but also when making tiramisu and parfait. This is a typical German product, it needs to be said, but it is versatile as broadly demonstrated in a cookbook created by Leupoldt.

Lebkuchen, however, remains the tastiest and most popular speciality, especially at Christmas time, so Adam and Laura have decided to create some new versions, decisively more modern and extravagant, suitable for the international public (in Italy they are distributed by Loacker). The new, not-to-be-missed products are Lebkuchen with Amaro Ramazzotti, with Lazzaroni amaretti biscuits, with pink pepper, pistachio or with aronia berry liqueur. We strongly recommend to visit the microscopic Das Kleine Museum, in a very modern building next to the shop, with exhibits personally curated by Laura. Here you can find the works of some of the most interesting contemporary artists – a testimony of the passion and of the taste for the beautiful shared by the Leupoldt family.