Bernese hazelnut leckerli (Berner haselnuss leckerli)

II’ve been baking Christmas cookies for many years. Two of them have become favorites: cinnamon stars and these Bernese hazelnut leckerli from Switzerland where I spent most of my youth.

The cinnamon star recipe was given to me by a family friend who lived down the road from my parent's home in the Bernese Oberland.

The Bernese hazelnut leckerli are very local to the area around Bern. A little further away, in Basel, they have their own leckerli that includes flour.

I recently read that during the Greco-Roman period this type of soft honey cookie/cake was given to the sick with the belief that it had healing powers and prolonged life.

In German they were then called lebens kuchen (cake of life), leben meaning life and kuchen, meaning cake. The two words were then contracted into lebkuchen that now translated into English would be gingerbread although it is not quite the same.

Let's stick with 'cake of life' in the expectation that these cookies (cinnamon stars are a close relative to the Bernese hazelnut leckerli) will keep you healthy and happy for a long time.

As the years went by, I reduced the amount of sugar from the original recipe. You can probably reduce it even more and still have a delicious cookie. Prepare them several weeks before Christmas. They get better with time.

Bernese Hazelnut Leckerli

Ingredients:

340 g roasted hazelnuts with their skins
250 g hazelnuts with their skins
200 g almonds with their skins
250 g light brown sugar
120 g candied orange peel finely diced
2 lemons, zests only
150 g honey, mild tasting
2 Tb Kirsch
2 egg whites whipped until they form stiff peaks
80 extra hazelnuts for decorating
Cookie cutter 4 cm in diameter.

1. Grill the hazelnuts in a pan or in the oven until they just begin to give off a roasted aroma.

2.In the food processor grind all the hazelnuts and almonds until you get the consistency of coarse crystalized sugar. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.

3. Add the sugar, orange peel, lemon zests, honey, Kirsch and lastly the whipped egg whites. Stir with a wooden spoon until all the ingredients are well incorporated. Knead with the palm of your hands until the dough holds in a ball. (Kneading encourages the extraction of the nut oils.)

4. Moisten the surface where you will be working. Take some of the dough, flatten it out and with a wet palm pat it to a thickness of a little less than one cm.

5. Dip your cookie cutter in a bowl of cold water, start cutting out your leckerli and place each one on a cookie tray covered with grease proof paper sprinkled with a little sugar so they don’t stick. Place a hazelnut in the middle of each cookie.

6. Regularly wash the cookie cutter so it makes clean cuts. Once all the leckerli are cut out let them dry uncovered for several hours or overnight at room temperature.

7. Heat the oven to 180°C, bake the cookies for 10 minutes maximum. When the leckerli have cooled down they should be soft and moist. Don’t be tempted to cook any longer thinking they are not done. They are.

8. Keep in an airtight container and don’t add any other type of flour-based cookie. They would lose their crispness by absorbing the moisture from the hazelnut leckerli.