Is That A Gingerbread Man in your Pocket? (Food)

The letter probably went something along these lines:

“Dear Mrs. So-n-so,

Your darling child has been given 3 days detention for inappropriate use of ginger bread. He made an unnecessary appendage on the gingerbread figures we are baking in home-economics class for the Christmas season. They were promptly removed and the cookies, all 50 of them, destroyed. Please take this up with him immediately.

–Ms. Crowsfeat”

And I am sure that wasn’t the last incident involving this iconic treat. A few hard charged cocktails at your last Christmas blowout and all sorts of appendages appeared on the gingerbread figures.  After getting your buzz on, that wild run down the street shouting, “Here is Ron Gingerbread Jeremy” more than likely torqued a few neighbors. Even the burly desk sergeant wasn’t tremendously amused when you appeared in front of him for a public lewdness charge still waving your gingerbread man.

And wasn’t it fun making gingerbread slums and gingerbread houses of ill repute?  Gingerbread pimps and ho’s? Even a tricked out gingerbread low-rider, tilted on its side like it had those hydraulics you dream of for your Pinto? Sure was, Snoop.

Yep. Maturity never reared its ugly head in your life. But as you sat there, tightly gripping the table so it would stop spinning and biting hard into your cheek to snap some sobriety into your numb and twisted brain, did you ever wonder about just where that ginger bread tradition came from? That sweet, spicy cookie you shaped so majestically into many a wondrous and impressive appendage?  Like that “Dolly Parton” version?

Well, you genius of pastry porn, let’s pull up a bar stool and take a gander into the history of gingerbread.

The cookie and cake have been around for centuries. In Medieval times, gingebras, the French term for it, was used to describe both thick cakes and thin crispy cookies cut into human and animal shapes for celebrations.

Returning Crusaders brought back recipes for it from the Middle East and it quickly became common fare at festivals celebrating harvests and spring.

The English, in typical fashion, changed the name to “fairings”, which were eaten at Easter and for autumn festivals. Shakespeare mentioned it in Love’s Labours Lost. There is even a tradition of single maidens eating a gingerbread man shaped like, well, a man, in hopes of finding a husband. Bet they would have loved your gingerbread men, huh, Johnny Holmes?

The pastry has had its fair share of success through history but Germany still holds supreme on gingerbread in both tradition and folklore. Guilds were formed of gingerbread chefs. Local festivals celebrated the cookie and its spawn. The Brothers Grimm used a gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel, that fairytale of two children abandoned by their parents who stumble upon a house of candy and gingerbread.

In the US, gingerbread is typically seen during Christmas. Houses are built of the pastry, cookies are made and it is generally one of the more prevalent desserts or treats doled out during the holiday season.

Like many cookies or pastries, each country has had a hand in forming a traditional recipe for gingerbread.  Scandinavia has a version that is thin and wafer-like.  In the US, molasses is used for a darker, richer cookie. In Germany, some recipes call for candied ginger to be used. In Poland, piernik, is a dark and spicy version.

In the following recipe we will use 3 types of ginger: crystallized, fresh and powdered. They are best served with milk, tea or, if you can slip it past the guards at the Clinic, a hot toddy. They can be stored for a week or so if kept wrapped tight or in a sealable bag or plastic container.

So give it a run, Stallion. After your court ordered dry out, maybe now the people you hang with now will find those three legged gingerbread men funny.

1 stick salted butter, soft
1/2 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
2 Tbsp. fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped or pulsed in food processor
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. ground ginger, preferable freshly purchased
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
4 pieces crystallized ginger, chopped into small pieces
2 lemons, juiced and zested
1 cup water
¾ cup powdered sugar

Cream together the butter, sugar and fresh ginger until smooth. Add all vanilla. Mix powdered and crystallized ginger, flour, baking soda and salt. Add remaining dry ingredients into butter mixture and gently mix. Form dough into brick about 2″ square, cover in plastic wrap and chill 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Cut brick into ¼ inch squares. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out to half original thickness. Use cutter to make shapes. Bake until golden–10 minutes or so. Remove and cool completely.

Whisk in powdered sugar with water in a bowl until becomes a spreadable paste. Finish with lemon juice and zest.  Use a brush to brush over cookies as glaze.

Makes about 30 1.5 to 2 inch cookies or 20, depending on your “additions”.

–Tim Connors, Red Editorial Staff