It’s no secret that I absolutely love lebkuchen, and am always delighted when it is finally ‘lebkuchen season’ – resulting in me being unable to pass by an Aldi without popping in for some! (The dark chocolate ones are vegan! Although I still try to ration them as too much sugar totally plays havoc with my hormones/thyroid etc)
Sadly none of the shops near us sell gluten free ones though and I end up feeling a bit mean devouring all these lebkuchen whilst my husband just watches! So last year I came up with these gluten free ones, which he loved, however to make things more difficult this year we’ve been trying to eat mostly vegan and so I decided we needed a new lebkuchen-y recipe!
And so the Lebkuchen Loaf was born! This squidgy baby is dairy free, vegan, gluten free and refined sugar free (depending on the chocolate chips used) it has all the festive flavours of regular lebkuchen, but is more allergy friendly.
Recipe Notes: Coconut sugar adds a nice caramel-y flavour, if you aren’t avoiding sugar you can direct sub for regular sugar, but it will alter the flavour slightly. If you can find pre-mixed lebkuchen spice then use that, or mix your own if you have a fave recipe. The mixed spice I’ve gone for is the Schwartz one as that had caraway seeds in the mix and I thought that sounded nice lol, I couldn’t find any ground cardamom anywhere, which is what is usually in lebkuchen spice, so I just went with the ‘mixed’ instead. The ‘chickpea eggs’ are used for binding in this recipe (rather than floofing) so if you can’t find gram flour but use a different kind of ‘egg’ for your binding then just sub for that instead! Whilst fresh orange zest and juice are best, you can totally cheat with orange essence and nobody will think you’re a failure, it’s fine. I’ve used Clarks ‘maple syrup’ which is not pure maple, it’s carob based as that’s much cheaper than real maple syrup here.
Lebkuchen Loaf Recipe (gluten free, dairy free, vegan, sugar free)
Ingredients:
- 1 and 1/3 cup Self-Raising Gluten Free flour (I’ve used Dove’s Farm)
- 1 cup Coconut Sugar
- 1 cup Ground Almonds
- 3 tsp Mixed Spice
- 2 ‘Chickpea Eggs’ (25g chickpea/gram flour and 4 tbsp water)
- 1/3 cup Clarks Maple Syrup
- 1/3 cup Rapeseed Oil (or you could use melted df marg)
- 1/3 cup Plant Milk (I used Koko coconut milk as that’s my fave)
- Orange zest and 2tsps of juice, or just 1 tsp of ‘orange essence’
- Choc chips (you can get vegan and sugar free ones from Amazon, or check the ingredients of the ‘dark’ ones at the shops as some of them are vegan – Aldi are okay, Tesco are not)
Method:
- Line a loaf tin and preheat oven to 170C/150C fan/ 350F/ GM4
- Pop the flour, sugar, almonds and mixed spice in a large bowl and mix together.
- In a separate bowl mix up your chickpea eggs in to a smooth paste.
- Add the chickpea eggs, maple syrup, oil, milk, zest/juice/essence to the large bowl and mix.
- Fold in HALF a packet of choc chips (about 50/60g depending on bag size!) and save the rest for later. (Stop eating them!)
- Pour in to the lined loaf tin and bake for 45-50 mins until a skewer comes out clean.
- Wait for it to cool. No really, it’s too crumbly while warm, (at this point I practically have to fight my family to stop them eating it lol)
- Once cool melt the rest of the choc chips and drizzle ‘artistically’ on top…
I honestly have no idea how long this will keep as it is always devoured the same day I make it! I should imagine that an airtight container would be a good idea though, possibly hidden from your husband.
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