My dad arrived from France this week and the first thing I asked was what cake shall I bake for you, when ever he comes over he wants a cake so I thought this time I would find out what flavour he actually wanted rather than just making him my guinea pig for flavour ideas, he said he wanted a cake that was like the lebkuchen cookies we used to buy when i was younger from the german supermarket. I also decided to make a gelatine snow globe to go on the top (this needs to made 24hours in advance). To make the lebkuchen cakes i decided to keep the recipe like the cookies but then folding in some whipped egg whites and yokes at the end to make it a bit lighter than the heavy cookie, but its still chewy and dense like the cookie, basically it is like three giant lebkuchen cookies stacked with mascarpone frosting. this was only a mini 6inch cake with three layers just enough for him to eat while he was here. (I think that you could get 6 slices out of it) I did buy some white marzipan to make a little snow man to go inside the snow globe but then I remembered I had this little china deer so I used that instead.

for details on how to make the snow globe visit this website , its a great really detailed tutorial, mines a little bent in places but for a first attempt it worked out will.

recipe for cakes

• 160g runny honey
• 1 tbsp. dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp. light brown sugar
• 110g unsalted butter
• 50g ground almonds
• 250g self raising flour
• 1 and half tbsp. ground ginger
• 2 tbsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 2 tsp cocoa powder
• 2 pepper corns ground
• seeds from 2 cardamom pods ground
• 4 anise seeds ground
• three eggs separated

• 200g mascarpone
• 150ml double cream
• 6 tbsp. icing sugar (of 4 honey for sugar free)
• 1 tsp vanilla