Honey Cookie Recipe: How to Make Traditional Honey Cookies

Honey cookies are traditional Jewish or German holiday cookies that can be soft and chewy or thin and crispy, depending on the precise recipe. Jewish families place these treats on their dessert tables during the first night of the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah. To those in the Jewish faith, eating sweets like honey cookies on Rosh Hashanah symbolizes an assurance of a sweet new year ahead.

As German holiday cookies, honey cookies also go by the name lebkuchen and are similar in flavor profile to gingerbread. Compared to Jewish recipes for honey cookies, the German versions are generally cakier in texture. German honey cookies are popular during the holiday season, particularly around Christmas. Lebkuchen can be hard or soft, depending on your preferences. Sometimes bakers decorate lebkuchen with intricate icing designs by hand, similar to how you might decorate a gingerbread cookie or gingerbread house.

Honey cookies vary depending on the baker’s country, religion, and personal preferences, so numerous recipes exist. Find one you want to use as your base honey cookie recipe and then adapt it with one or more of the following tips:

• Add brown sugar for chewier cookies. Brown sugar contains molasses, which makes cookies and brownies chewier than if you used white sugar. The more sugar a recipe calls for, the crispier the cookie will be. For softer and chewier cookies, use light brown sugar since dark brown sugar has a strong molasses flavor that will overpower the delicate honey flavor. If all you have is dark brown sugar, use half of that and half white sugar to mimic light brown sugar.
• Change up the flavors. While honey is the primary flavor in honey cookies, there is wiggle room for adding other flavor elements. You can try adding chocolate chips, peanut butter, or ground spices like ground cinnamon or ground nutmeg.
• Cover the cookies with chocolate and nuts. Follow your recipe’s instructions for the honey cookie dough and bake the cookies. Then dip them in melted dark or white chocolate. Before the chocolate sets, dip or roll the chocolate-covered cookie in chopped nuts.
• Cut out fun shapes. You can make honey cookies as rolled cookies, cut-out cookies or drop cookies. For cut-out cookies, use cookie cutters of different shapes to make fun and seasonally relevant figures. A horse is a traditional shape for some types of lebkuchen, but really any shape works.
• Don’t over-bake the cookies. Honey cookies are prone to burning due to the sugar content in honey or other ingredients. The average baking time for honey cookies is around nine minutes. If you’re making a cut-out version, you want to roll the dough thick enough to prevent the cookies from burning quickly but also thin enough that they won’t require a long time in the oven (and thus risk burning anyway).
• Use high-quality honey. Honey is the star ingredient, so use the highest-quality honey possible. Opt for raw honey, Manuka honey, or another honey that’s deep golden in color and has no added ingredients or colorings. Starting with high-quality honey often yields a better-tasting cookie.