No. 3339

Basel Leckerlets

Leckerlets de Bale

Pour four pounds of honey into a saucepan and stand it on the range; as soon as it rises remove and leave the honey to cool. Arrange five pounds of flour in a circle on the table; in the center lay one pound of sugar, one pound of finely cut-up citron, two pounds of chopped almonds, one ounce of grated nutmeg, one ounce of ground cinnamon, half an ounce of ground cloves, two gills of kirsch, the chopped peel of two lemons, and one ounce of finely crushed carbonate of ammonia. On these ingredients pour the cold honey and mix all together, working the flour in slowly to form it into a smooth, firm paste; leave this in a cool spot to rest for two hours; then roll it with the rolling-pin into flats three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness; spread these on slightly buttered baking sheets, and bake in a hot oven. As soon as done remove and allow to cool, then ice them over with cooked icing (No. 102) flavored with orange flower water, applying it with a brush; when the icing is dry cut the flats into small cakes two and a half inches long by three-quarters of an inch wide.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's version is a professional batch — better than twelve pounds of dough — and it uses two ingredients that need translating before you start: baker's ammonia and a cooked icing from elsewhere in the book.

Carbonate of ammoniaThis is baker's ammonia (hartshorn, ammonium carbonate), still sold for exactly this kind of thin spice cookie. It works only in dough rolled thin, where the ammonia gas can escape; in a thick cake it leaves a sharp smell and taste. Crush it to a fine powder and expect a strong ammonia reek from the oven that vanishes as the sheets cool.
Two gills of kirschA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of kirsch for five pounds of flour. Use a real unsweetened cherry brandy, not a cherry liqueur, or the dough will be cloying on top of a pound of sugar and four pounds of honey.
A hot ovenSomething in the region of 400F, though the book gives no temperatures and 'hot oven' covered a wide range. Honey doughs colour fast and scorch on the bottom, so bake on a doubled or heavy sheet and pull the flats while they still give slightly — at three-sixteenths of an inch they set as they cool.
Scaling downThe full quantity is a bakery batch. Quartering it gives a workable domestic amount: about 1 lb 4 oz flour, 1 lb honey, 4 oz sugar, 4 oz citron, 8 oz almonds, and roughly a quarter of each spice and a quarter cup of kirsch.
Bringing the honey upHeating the honey "as soon as it rises" means to the point of foaming, then off the heat. Letting it cool fully before it meets the ammonia matters — hot honey drives off the leavening before the dough is even mixed.
Cooked icing No. 102Ranhofer's cooked icing is a boiled sugar icing; the recipe itself is not reproduced on this page. A simple glaze of confectioners' sugar with a little water and orange flower water does much the same job.
Ice first, cut afterThe order in the original is deliberate and worth keeping: glaze the whole sheet, let the icing set, then cut the bars. Cutting first and glazing each piece gives ragged edges and is a good deal slower.
Yield and keepingThe full batch runs to several hundred bars at two and a half by three-quarters of an inch. They are meant to be kept — stored airtight, the crumb softens and the spice mellows over two to three weeks, which is when they are at their best.

A Little History

Basler Läckerli are the spice cake of Basel, a honey-and-almond dough in the broad family of medieval European Lebkuchen — cakes raised by potash, hartshorn or long fermentation rather than by eggs or butter, and stiff with pepper-trade spices. Basel sat on the Rhine at the junction of routes carrying cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg north, and the city's cakes are generally traced to its late-medieval spice guilds; the kirsch and the candied citron are local additions from a region that distils cherries and imported preserved fruit. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the Delmonico's kitchens in New York for over thirty years, put the recipe in The Epicurean (1894) among the tea cakes, in French as Leckerlets de Bâle — one of many Continental keeping-cakes a large American hotel kitchen would make in quantity and hold for weeks against the tea service.