These are a hard cookie with a delicate taste of spice and honey.

As a valentines gift or for mothers day you could make one large cookie (roll the dough onto a cookie tray, cut out the shape and remove the exess dough) bake as instructed below.

When cool spread melted chocolate over the top of the cookie and decorate as desired, you could also use small sugar flowers for decoration.

2 1/3 cup plain flour (all purpose)

1/2 cup cornflour

2 teaspoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

100g (3.5 oz) unsalted butter

3/4 cup honey

2 tablespoons milk

150g (5.3 oz) white chocolate

1/4 teaspoon extra mixed spice for dusting

Preheat oven 180C (350F, Gas 4)

1. Line two baking tray with baking paper.

2. Sift the flours, cocoa powder and spices into a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center.
3. Place the milk, honey and butter into a small pan. Melt over low heat until the mixture is smooth.
4. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
5. Add the cooled butter mixture to the dry ingredients.
6. Using a table knife stir the mixture until a soft dough is formed.
7. Place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 1 minute until smooth.
8. Shape the dough into a ball. At this stage if you feel that the dough is too soft to roll, wrap in plastic and place in the refrigerator for about 1 hour or until it firms up.
9. Roll the dough to 7mm (0.3 inch).
10. Using a cookie cutter, cut into heart shapes (or other shapes) about 6cm (2.4 inch) wide.
11. Using a spatula gently lift and place the cookie shapes onto the prepared trays. Lightly knead the excess dough together and roll out again and cut out more shapes, do this until all the dough is all used up.
12. Bake for about 25 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks.
13. Melt the white chocolate in a small heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir until the chocolate has melted. Remove from the heat.
14. Dip one half of the lebkuchen cookies into the chocolate.
15. Place the cookies onto grease proof paper until the chocolate has set.
16. If you want a decorated cookie use colored sprinkles, chopped toasted nuts etc., do this before the chocolate sets. You may like to dip and decorate a few at a time rather than dipping all the cookies at once, and finding that the chocolate has set before you get to the last one.