Hello again, I hope that all is well.

Have you checked out these recipes?

Low Fat Biscotti with Cheddar Cheese and Walnuts – Cheddar cheese and walnuts are featured in these savory, flavorful, low fat biscotti. They are great for breakfast with a cup of your favorite hot coffee or beverage.

A Simple Bar Cookie Recipe Featuring Dates – In this simple bar cookie recipe, you find an ingredient list and easy directions to make delicious treats in your own kitchen.

Homemade Palmiers From Four Basic Ingredients – Baking palmiers with butter, flour, sour cream, and sugar.

Czechoslovakia Walnut Cookies – Not Just for Christmas – Simple ingredients and easy directions on how to bake delicious walnut cookies.


Recipe Comparison

This segment is to give you a general idea of possible taste and texture cookies might have before you actually bake them. It is not to determine that one recipe is better or worse than the other.

Both these recipes for lebkuchen are in A Baker’s Tour – Nick Malgieri‘s Favorite Baking Recipes from Around the World. First Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. 2005.

1 cup = 8oz = 16 Tbsp = 48 tsp
1 whole egg is approximately 2 oz., yolk is about 0.5 oz. and the white 1.5 oz.

Amount Baker’s %
R 1 R 2 R 1 R 2
All purpose flour 4 c. 4 c. 100% 100%
Honey ¾ c. ½ c. 19% 13%
Molasses ½ c. 0 c. 13% 0%
Dark brown sugar 0 c. 1/3 c. 0% 8%
Butter 0 c. ¼ c. 0% 6%
Heavy whipping cream 0 c. 2/3 c. 0% 17%

One of these recipes definitely yields more delicate and somewhat less sweet cookies than the other. Visit lebkuchen to confirm your answer.


Baking Cookies at High Altitudes

Without adjusting their cookie recipes, home bakers who live and bake at altitudes above 3,000 feet usually experience flat, very sweet, and dry cookies.

Moisture evaporates quickly at high altitudes making ingredients such as sugar, butter, etc. more concentrated in flavor.

As the altitude gets higher, there is less and less air pressure, and gases such as carbon dioxide expand more rapidly. Unfortunately, by the time cookies are set and done, most of the gas has already escaped, leaving you with a flat product.

Raising oven temperature by 20-25 degrees F. will get cookies to set and develop color faster before all the moisture and carbon dioxide (leavening gas) disappear.

To avoid extra sweetness, adjust the amount of sugar in your recipe by 2 tablespoons for every 1 cup.

Cutting the amount of leaveners in half also helps your homemade cookies from becoming too flat. However, if sour cream is present in your dough, do allow at least ½ teaspoon of baking soda for every cup of sour cream to effectively neutralize the acidity.

Until next time….. Meanwhile, please share this newsletter with other cookie lovers.


Published date: October 13, 2007

Copyright 2007 by Trinh Lieu. All right reserved.