INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

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
Posted to MM-Recipes Digest V3 #340
From: Linda Place <placel@worldnet.att.net>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 01:07:01 +0000

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