There are those few recipes that are so loaded with memories and childhood nostalgia that you really start to wonder if you are ready to share it with the rest of the world. For these are the recipes that truly deserve to be kept a family secret. My grandmother’s Lebkuchen is one of those rare recipes. Though I think the English term for Lebkuchen is gingerbread, it doesn’t feel right to call them that, since there isn’t actually any ginger involved. Try to think of it as the German variety. Different, but just as good.

When I grew up we lived with my grandparents, and every year in November my grandmother made Lebkuchen for St. Martin’s Day. St. Martin is a tradition here, celebrating a certain St. Martin who - as the legend goes - on a bitterly cold night met a beggar who was freezing to death and didn’t hesitate to cut his warm coat in two parts and share it with him, thus saving him from dying. To celebrate this children make colorful lanterns and go from door to door singing songs and getting sweets. It’s kind of a cute Halloween without the dressing up and blackmailing harmless people into giving you treats. Back then we lived in a suburb of Cologne, kind of like a little village, only instead of being surrounded by fields and forests we had the highway on one and another main road on the other side. The thing was that everybody knew everybody and you could cover more than half of the houses in one night.

Another fond memory and one of the few moments where I will actually get into “back in the olden days” mood is that we used candles to light our lanterns. Today all I see is those little light bulbs swinging from side to side. Sure, using candles also meant that probably everyone remembers that one year when their lantern burnt down, but I also do believe that the charm of real candlelight totally made up for that one rather catastrophic night.

However, every year my grandmother made her Lebkuchen to give as a treat (instead of bought sweets or fruit) and I also remember people saying that this was their favorite treat to get. Unfortunately we never get St. Martin visitors here (or rather, one group of children in four years of living here), so there goes my chance of becoming equally famous. This hasn’t stopped me from getting the recipe from my aunt and making my first batch of Lebkuchen this year. My aunt told me that the recipe usually gets her about 1 1/2 baking trays, though I got exactly two trays out of it. I guess my trays are just a bit smaller. Two trays equals a lot of Lebkuchen, so I brought some to work for everyone to enjoy and still have a lot left. If you don’t plan on feeding everyone at the office, you should probably just use half the recipe and still have plenty of yummy pre-Christmas Lebkuchen to enjoy.

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