Jakob’s Basler Leckerly

Switzerland’s oldest cookie company

Throw open a Baedeker travel guide from 1844 and you’ll see the advice to visit Steiger’schen’s (today Jakob’s) Basler Leckerly, to taste the famous Basel treat from a company that had already existed for about a century.

‘Leckerli could have been eaten by every US president, were he so inclined,’ says Andreas Kuster who, with his wife Charlotte, are the current owners of the company, today one of Switzerland’s thirty oldest.

Basel born and bred, Andreas remembers the Leckerli of his childhood. When it was time to make the family’s Christmas batch, his mother would call for him, his father and brother, and task them with kneading the dough - muscle was required for Leckerli baking. It’s a taste from childhood, and one that he is now proud to offer to the public.