1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
3 each eggs
1/2 cup cold water
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup sorghum or molasses
1 all-purpose flour (5-6 cups)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt
Directions
Preparation time: 30 minutes Chilling time: Overnight Baking time: 10
minutes
1. Cream shortening and sugar in mixing bowl, beat in eggs, one at a
time. Mix water and baking soda in small bowl until dissolved. Add
baking soda mixture and sorghum to butter mixture. Sift 5 1/2 cups of
the flour, the spices and salt together. Blend into dough. Divide
dough into 4 balls. Wrap in plastic wrap. Flatten and refrigerate
overnight.
2. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Roll 1 portion of dough out at a time on
lightly floured surface. Cut into desired shapes. Bake on a greased
cookie sheet until puffed, 10 to 12 minutes. Do not overbake.
3. When cool, decorate with buttercream frosting and/or candies as
desired. Sorghum gives these cookies a special flavor, but molasses
can be used as a substitute.
Ann Smith of Plainfield won second place, and described how her
gingerbread men left Bohemia in 1872 and immigrated to the United
States. Smith's great-grandmother, "Babicka" Novak, lived in a small
Czech-American town in South Dakota where Smith's mother grew up in
the 1920s. At Christmas time, her great-grandma would give her
neighbors Old World gingerbread men, reindeer and rocking horses.
"One year when Great-grandma delivered the cookies, she brought
along her teenaged grandson, who was visiting from a small ethnic
Czech community in Nebraska," Smith wrote.
"Introductions made that day over the watchful eyes of the
gingerbread men eventually lead to wedding bells for my parents a
decade later. Great-grandma Novak probably had planned this all
along!" from the Chicago Tribune second annual Food Guide Holiday
Cookie Contest December 14, 1989
Servings: 36 servings
1989 2nd Place: Great-Grandma's Gingerbread C Recipe brought to you by Recipe Ideas
Categories: Bread; Breads; Cake
The History of Recipes
Written recipes as a concept can be found back into the distant past, certainly as far back as the Egypt of the Pharoahs, and quite possibly further than that. In practice though, generally, these ancient recipes were just very basic pictorial, hieroglyphic or cunieform instructions for preparing food.
In an interesting twist, the oldest recipe in existence, according to food historians is a series of tablets in the Sumerian language describing the preparation of bread which is then used to make a drink, quite possibly a form of beer as it is recorded as having made drinkers feel blissful and exhilarated. Moving our culinary historical trip onwards, there are two interesting books published in the fourteenth century - a cookery book called `Forme of Cury`, and another named `Curye on Inglish`. Don`t be fooled by the titles though, these two books have no connection with the curry that appears on menues today, but rather descriptions of the types of meals enjoyed by the rich and powerful of that time. Later on, in the 15th century, the Crusaders brought back many foods and spices from Arab countries, including coriander, parsley, and basil. These new culinary innovations led to an outbreak in publications on food, some of which still exist in academic collections. Over the next few hundred years, the powerful families of Wesstern Europe competed with each other to serve the most extravagent banquests, and as a consequence, the best cooks and their recipes were at a premium. Even so, it was during the 1800s that haute cuisine and recipe books really came of age. The Famous Mrs Isabella Beeton in the UK, and the equally well-known Fannie Merritt Farmer in the USA, dedicated their lives to collating, testing, and publishing popular recipes of the day. The revolution that is television brings us TV chefs and the demand for the spin-off recipe books. And that neatly brings us to the present day and the invention of computers and the internet, permitting everybody to search through thousands of recipes like the ones you can find on this web site. |
We hope you enjoy this 1989 2nd Place_ Great Grandma's Gingerbread C recipe.
