Rick,
you wrote:
>When I was a boy,....
the "cookies" are called Lebkuchen and loaded with honey
and spices. Initially they are soft but harden later
and are always great! They are usually baked on
thin white wafers.
Do a search on that word and lots of links come up,
mostly German. http://www.gerald-held.de/Lebkuchen/lebkuchen.html
is one of them. You may have to employ babelfish.
Elisenlebkuchen is something special baked without regular flour, this is
a link in English:
http://www.happycookers.com/wc.dll/recipes/divulge/595.html
but I am not sure how authentic this is. I am very wary of
californianized German recipes and have my reasons, see:
http://samartha.net/SD/procedures/PPN01/
There is a great variety in Lebkuchen, in shape - round, square,
ingredients - hazel/wal-nuts, almonds, candied lemon/orange peel, spices,
coat - chocolate, holding moisture better, sugar, nuts....
I have an over 100 year old German cookbook (42. edition 1902) and one
recipe in there goes like this:
1000 g honey
1000 g flour
420 g sugar
17 g ground cinnamon
17 g ground cloves
8 g ground nutmeg (they talk about nutmeg flower, I think, nutmeg is
usually a kind of a big seed - maybe it is the same?)
70 g candied lemon peel (Zitronat)
2 g cardamom
2 lemons
280 g almonds
Oblaten (that's the thin white wafers, where the dough is put)
Heat honey in brass pan, stir in flour, sugar, cinnamon, gloves, nutmeg,
finely minced candied lemon peel, ground off peel from 2 lemons, almonds
with peel left on, finely minced, cardamom, thoroughly stir this dough, put
wafers on a baking tray, coat dough finger-thick in the desired
Lebkuchen-size, put thinly sliced Zitronat (candied lemon peel) on top, let
it dry for one hour and bake with very moderate heat.
Enjoy!
Samartha