Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Real Deal

Tam took Evan over to a friend's house this weekend so the boys could bake some Christmas cookies. What a great idea. A couple of 5 year olds rolling out cookies and frosting them-- in someone else's kitchen!

Anyway, it gave me the idea to do the same. Being the traditional kind-a-guy that I am I decided to whip up a batch of those all-time classics: gingerbread men. This cookie cutter and gingerbread man are the type my Mom, and her mom before her, made every year.

The problem was I didn't have a recipe for gingerbread cookie dough. A quick on-line search brought up a few recipes but it was hard to tell if they were the real deal. Old-time gingerbread boys, easy gingerbread boys, no-fuss gingerbread boys. What the heck?!

As convenient as on-line e-books and resources may be, it's at times like this that I am happy to still have my wall of cookbooks. I don't know if I've got it right-- I won't know until the finished product has rested a day or so. And then a bit of frosting and a few decorative candies. But I think my odds are pretty good that the recipe I selected is the real deal: The text reads, "This is the dough that the gingerbread dolls of our childhood were made from." That's Mabel Claire writing in,  Meier & Frank's Cookbook and Kitchen Guide for the Busy Woman. Copyright 1932.


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