Läckerli
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A glazed slab of spiced honey biscuit, the Basel speciality.
The Läckerli sits in the hand like a small paving stone: a thick, dense rectangle in which honey mingles with spices, covered by a thin film of icing sugar, barely translucent. Under the teeth it gives way at first, then pushes back. Inside you will find almonds, hazelnuts and candied orange and lemon peel.
The method is simple. The dough, kneaded from flour and honey, is rolled out into one large flat sheet and sent to the oven. When it comes out, it is brushed with sugar syrup, then cut into rectangles while still warm. Once cool, each piece keeps its glaze.
The word Läckerli was in use all over German-speaking Switzerland and southern Germany long before Basel made it its own. The earliest known Swiss recipe is in the notebook of a Bern physician, in 1621; in Basel the word only turns up in 1711, in the accounts of a guild that had bought three sheets of them.
Today many of the city’s bakeries make them, each to its own recipe, and one of Basel’s makers bakes them twice as thick as the others.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Basler Läckerli” (French, German and English).
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