Alternative Ginger Persons
These are absolutely not gingerbread. They’re also not necessarily persons. They can be animals, vegetables or minerals, and a bad batch might make quite a good game of this.*
They are also what I would have made yesterday, if I’d either had the time or could afford the calories. Or both, of course, but to hope for such a concatenation would be greedy. The original recipe came out of a newspaper when I was a teenager, but I’ve copied it over at least twice since then, and even so the page is rather brown and spotty. It is however very easy to find in the sweet-baking notebook because there is a slimmish plastic bag slipped in next to it, containing the surviving highlights of forty years of ginger cookie templates. I’ve done horses, dogs, cats, birds, reindeer, hedgehogs, sailboats, convertibles (classics only), wedding cakes (sic), books, houses, ball gowns, washing machines . . . okay, sometimes my friends and I have celebrated some rather odd things. I’ve also done roses, but the stems are the very devil. You’re better off doing a bouquet, which you will have to sort with lines of frosting, but you still have to do a cut out thing with leaves and at the end you want to lacquer it and submit it to the Tate Modern, not have someone eat it in ten seconds, however many times they say ‘ooooh delicious.’** Stems, which is to say tails, is my excuse for never having essayed a sighthound of any variety. And all those long skinny legs. And the ears. Ugh. But now there’s only one dog birthday a year instead of three I may have to try it, some 17 August.
They taste delectable, they make excellent funny shapes***, people are usually thrilled with them† . . . and the dough is a sod to work with. But I like them so much I keep making them. Although not very often. When there’s something really important to celebrate.
1 c butter
1 ½ c white sugar
1 egg
Grated rind one orange
½ tsp orange essence
2 T molasses
3 c sifted all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger††
½ tsp cloves
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg, beat fluffy. Add orange rind, essence, and molasses, and beat till fluffy again. Mix flour and spices, stir in thoroughly.
Chill dough at least two hours, four is better. If you can remember, make the dough the night before.††† Then slice bits off and roll them to about 1/8th inch–certainly less than a quarter inch. I roll it out on the cookie sheet (therefore you don’t want one with tall sides) to save wear and tear, and then plonk my patterns down, cut around them, and peel off the scraps. This dough is, as you will have noticed, very buttery, and your cookie sheet doesn’t need greasing, although I usually use parchment paper so later on in the process the new cookies aren’t picking up a thin veneer of old crumbs–it also means you can leave the cookies in situ on the paper till they cool enough to solidify and are safe to move, but can keep the cookie sheet in action. 10-12 minutes 350°–or possibly 8-15, depending on your oven and how crisp you like them. You don’t want them soft, or they’ll break (especially if you’ve done something foolhardy with a pattern), but I personally feel you don’t want them to brown either.
There’s also the question of adding more flour to make the dough easier to work. I don’t find that the second batch, made out of the first batch’s scraps, are noticeably tougher for having been smushed together and rolled out again, although I tend to save the third go out from any dramatic presentation, in case they’ve begun to feel a little tired and emotional by then. I also don’t think a little flour on your hands and your rolling pin ever dimmed any cookie’s brilliance, but if you find yourself having to coat everything with flour you might be better off to put the rest of the dough back in the refrigerator again to recongeal. It does get sticky as it warms up.
And you really should decorate these. My books, ball gowns and washing machines certainly would have been a lot harder to identify without a few piped icing pages, frills and control panels. I use a slightly thinned down basic vanilla buttercream frosting, and I try to use it fairly liberally because the frosting goes a treat with these cookies. Raisins are traditional, but I feel they’re superfluous in this case. Oh, and if you break any legs, stems or tails, you can sometimes glue them as it were gingerly back together with frosting. But treat any such wounded veterans tenderly.
* * *
* Is it a spider? Is it a chandelier? Is it the kid next door, who started his own punk/goth rock group recently?
** And reindeer antlers made me wish I’d stuck to Christmas trees.
*** This may not be immediately obvious to anyone who hasn’t tortured herself with cut-out cookies, but not every rolled cookie dough takes fancy designs well.
† People had better be thrilled with them
†† Hmmph. They should be Alternative Cinnamon Persons
††† But don’t put it in the coldest part of your fridge, or you will not have rigorous and exhaustively chilled dough, you will have a glacier.
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Yum. Gingerbread.
I have a sheep cookie cutter. The legs can be tricky. But not quite as tricky as the alpaca one. :p
Tricky dough problems with gluten-free stuff as well. For Christmas we just about *assembled* them on the tray. LOL
One more “McKinley” recipe for the file! :) Thank you!
My pleasure! –Oh, yes, I’ve done sheep. Don’t have a cookie cutter for them though. An alpaca cookie cutter?! Okay, I’m impressed!!!
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Goodness, compared to yours (or anyone else’s, really) my cookie cutters are plain BORING. Oh well. I tend to prefer easy round molasses cookies (recipe upon request), chocolate chip cookies (or chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips and possibly macadamia nuts), or Russian tea cakes (during the holidays when I’d be making ginger persons/Christmas trees).
And I must say, no one had better try the cookies once they’ve been lacquered. Ick.
Oh, all of the ones I’m talking about I DREW. They aren’t cookie cutters. I have a perfectly good round cutter for when I just want, you know, COOKIES. :) . . . Actually I have a pretty good assortment of cookie cutters. I’m just always looking for more boundaries to bounce off of. Russian tea cakes–yes, love ‘em. :) And I have a chocolate cookie with white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts recipe!!! . . . But we can always use another molasses cookie recipe. I’ve got several, but I don’t think I’ve posted any yet.
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All right, you asked for it.
Elevator Lady Cookies
(I have no idea where this name came from.)
1 cup sugar
¾ cup shortening
1 egg
¼ c molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsp soda
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
¾ tsp cloves
¾ tsp ginger
Heat oven to 350°. Cream together sugar and shortening. Add the egg and molasses and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix until a dough forms. Scoop into balls and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 7-9 minutes. Yield depends on how big your scoops are and how much you eat (not that I ever do–no, not EVER) before baking.
It’s really easy–just my kind of recipe–and there’s none of this rolling out and cutting. You can also double the recipe and scoop balls of dough and freeze them, then transfer them to a plastic bag and bake them right from the freezer–it’ll take longer, but it works pretty well. Or you can freeze the baked cookies and take them out every so often so you don’t eat them all at once. Yes, I love my freezer when it comes to cookies.
No! Wait! One of us is losing her mind! There is this story about someone in an elevator with cookies, and a lady on the elevator said, I could make better (molasses?) cookies, and she did. I’m sure I didn’t imagine it!
“Elevator Lady Cookies
(I have no idea where this name came from.)”
That is exactly like my molasses cookie recipe, except that I add a 1/2 t. of cayenne pepper to give them bite.
http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2005/12/snappy_gingersnaps.html
“From Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book
Intro to recipe:
‘Once, in an elevator en route to my office, I was eating some spice cookies which I had made from a recipe in my big fat cookbook.
I gave one to the Elevator Lady, and she tasted it.
‘My,’ she said reflectively, ‘I can sure make a better spice cooky than that.’ So she brought me her recipe, and she was quite right. This is a short, rich, ginger-snap sort of a cooky, and the recipe makes plenty.’”
I AM SO RELIEVED. :)
I have to post about Peg Bracken here one day; I got hold of her Compleat and . . . it’s still brilliant, even if the world HAS changed. :)
I think this is from Peg Bracken. I can check… but that story about the elevator lady is familiar…
WHEW. :)
This recipe comes from Peg Bracken’s “I Hate to Cook Cookbook”. …And these are wonderful gingersnap cookies. This is one of our family’s favorite recipes.
Look up the story! I used to accept that I would never understand the name, but now I have to know! I’d do it myself but I have no idea what story you’re talking about.
Ooh mmmmmm. Are you making these today? Tomorrow? I’m going to see about that tesseract again. If some are missing in the morning…you know why. ;)
I bet little ferret cookies would be hard, too. And then I’d feel bad for eating Austin’s head. But mmmm so good.
Ferret *tails.* I HATE tails. It’s not too hard to do a curled cat tail. And a nice thick horse tail is fine. Most things with tails . . . urg.
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***** Oh, and if you break any legs, stems or tails, you can sometimes glue them as it were gingerly back together with frosting.
Groan! these sound lovely, but too tempting to treat gently – yummy!
Do you want a bull terrier template? Much shorter legs and a nice fat round gingerbready body? :)
LOL! You have one, I’ll take it!
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wedding cakes (sic),
:) shaped like cathedrals?
I favor a lemon juice/sugar icing on gingerbread cutouts, myself. Funny you post this, we’re having a brainstorming meeting for Holiday Exhibit 2009 next week, and we’ve all agreed to bring xmas cookies to share. I’d already settled on almond shortbread… but perhaps if no one else is doing gingerbread I’ll give your recipe a test drive.
No, shaped like tiered wedding cakes. :) Then you draw in the frosting with . . . frosting.
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Oh, goody! I have some lovely Halloween cutters I’ve been longing to use (my fave is the Frankenstein head, complete with neck-bolts), and this sounds like just the thing to use them with. Now if I can just convince everyone that the Halloween season begins at Labor Day… :)
Home made cookies are very convincing. :)
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These sound like fun, and delicious. And as we’re talking ginger, let me share my famous ginger cake recipe. You can NOT serve this without someone demanding the recipe, usually with their mouth full.
Ginger shortcake
185g butter
1 cup castor sugar
1 egg
1 3/4 cup plain flour
125g glace ginger
blanched almonds
milk
Cream the butter and sugar, add egg, sift in the flour. Makes a very stiff dough, and you can use a very little bit of milk to soften it (but not too much).
Chop the glace ginger into smallish pieces. (Sticky glace stuff works well, *don’t* use crytallised ginger. Buderim Ginger, the main producer in Australia, also has a product called Naked Ginger, ie un-crystallised. That’s actually quite good in this recipe, having just a bit more bite than the glace.)
Add ginger to the cake mix, stir thoroughly.
Press into a greased springform pan, decorate liberally with blanced almonds, glaze with milk. Bake in a moderate oven for 45 minutes. (Don’t dry it out by overcooking it.)
Dead easy, and utterly scrumptious. Enjoy!
****Chop the glace ginger into smallish pieces. (Sticky glace stuff works well, *don’t* use crytallised ginger.****
Why doesn’t crystallized ginger work? I *love* crystalllized ginger, although I ususally have to shake a lot of the sugar off of it, and always have it in the house. I have used it very successfully in scones.
This sounds very good.
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Yes I actually wondered too, also being a crystallised fan. Although I’ve also used the glace. The glace I know however is not that *different* except for the surface and could be swapped.
CONCATENATION!!!
See, this is one of the many reasons you are truly awesome. You’re the Original Goddess and Champion of Words! Words, even the most awfully intimidating, domineering ones, can be slung around by you and put to work beside their plainer cousins, just as if that’s where they belong–and suddenly, magically, they DO. And these formerly thorny etymological terrors can only acquiesce and come quietly to your beck and call!
I am completely certain that, had I not previously encountered them, I would have learned both “erubescence” and “tintinnabular” from you…
Snork! Actually, my spelling kind of sucks. . . .
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At my house it’s a (two year old) tradition to buy a new cookie cutter each Christmas and make gingerbread cookies in that shape. The first year we bought a dinosaur, and last year we bought a sailboat. Who needs people when you can make a herd of apotosaurs to graze on the lawn of your gingerbread house?
I love having fun with cookies. One Christmas I made a batch of Hobbit cookies and hung them on the tree. It seemed like a good idea at the time and my family enjoyed them.
I love the thought of washing machines and ballgown gingerthingies. Mwahahaha!
We have an annual family party (and by family I mean “everyone who might by some quirk of genetics or acquired association conceivably be enticed to come and try to squeeze into my sister’s house”) where we decorate (and eat) vast quantities of not-gingerbread and sugar cookies. Shapes vary depending on who’s helping cut cookies (cookie cutters, not drawn) but include everything from Christmas-themed to circus animals to dinosaurs (for the 7-year nephew).
The orange rind is a lovely idea! But I should add that, though I much prefer butter in cookies myself, we’ve found for our massive cookie-decorating events that going half-and-half butter and margarine makes the dough much less temperamental to work with, and the resulting cookies more inclined to survive being liberally frosted by small children.
Yes, well, I think margarine is Seriously Bad for You. I realise it’s a minority opinion, but it’s a growing minority.
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Like Shalea, I use the half butter/half veg. shortening for cutout cookies. It makes a difference in rolling out the dough. While I agree that processed shortening is something to be avoided, so are white sugar & white flour. Moderation in all things, including moderation; sometimes, you just gotta go with what works.*
For the last several years, I’ve made gingerbread cutouts in quantity (i.e., ten to twelve batches**) & given them away in lieu of greeting cards. The recipe I use has some key differences,*** and I use royal icing with a few drops of orange candy flavoring in it to decorate with. I will go for the third roll-out, and no one’s ever seemed to notice the difference.+ It seems a pity to waste the dough when I have a gazillion cookie cutters to play with.++
It really does help to get the dough done the day (or even the week) before, wrapped in plastic. Longer than a week, you want to freeze it (_thoroughly_ wrapped in freezer paper & put in plastic freezer bags); let it thaw in the fridge when you’re ready. I usually divide the dough in half, and smush the dough into a rough circle before chilling; it rolls out more quickly that way.
RE: cookie cutters: I think the best size are around 3″ to 4″ (approximately palm-sized). Large enough to be fun, but small enough than you can get a reasonable number of cookies out of one batch. The bigger ones are fun (and I’ve got several that I use every year), but they take a lot of dough & tend to break more easily in handling.+++
:-)
*Mind you, I only use butter in drop cookies. You want me to desecrate my chocolate chip cookies with Crisco?!?
**Which partly explains my bowing to convenience re: shortening
***Only 2T of molasses? Tsk.
+Which probably says more about what they’re accustomed to eating than the actual texture of the cookie
++You know the Unicorn Song^ written by Shel Silverstein? I can do all the animals in it, including the rat.
^http://www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/The_Unicorn_Song.shtml
+++Broken-limbed gingerpersons make great pirates, I’ve found.
YOu choose your poisons, certainly. I use organic sugar, which I consider a kind of passive poison as opposed to the more aggressive poisons of margarine. And the 2T of molasses simply makes the sugar ‘brown’. These are not molasses cookies; I make molasses cookies too; they’re something else. And I don’t throw the third rolling out–heaven forfend–but they’re what Peter and I eat, when I’m celebrating washing machines or whatever with the wider society.
****I think margarine is Seriously Bad for You****
Someone once wrote to Ann Landers asking where she could find margarine that wasn’t made of just shortening and chemicals. Of course she was told that margarine IS shortening and chemicals.
LOL! Oh, good for Ann Landers! (I hadn’t realised she–er–would know something like that.) And the *processing.* Shortening, chemicals and PROCESSING. What turns a liquid oil into a solid fat is A VERY BAD THING.
I’d love to see a photo of your gingerbread creation/s!
I don’t think there are any. Hmm. No, there might be. But finding them . . .
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I fondly remember that when I was a child, my mother and I used to make gingerbread cookies into ornaments for the Christmas tree by punching holes into the tops before cooking and then tying them to the tree with ribbons. Sometimes we would roll the dough into letters and end up with our names spelled out in cookies. And, if we wanted to keep our cookie ornaments permanently, we would use a certain recipe for the dough (I don’t remember much about the recipe except it was really salty) and then dip the cookies into polyeurethane to seal them. Kids love doing this kind of “crafty” stuff and I was no exception.
Yes, I’ve done cookie decorations, but mine always ended up getting eaten. :)
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If you have dogs in the house, they’d get eaten off the tree!
Our whippets were a lot smaller than your Danes! We hung them high up! –And I’d probably be DELIGHTED if hellhounds ate them off the tree. Sigh.
And I’d probably be DELIGHTED if hellhounds ate them off the tree. Sigh.
When the odds are that it will be projectiled out the end because of all that sugar? You’re braver than I thought! LOL
PS. Hellhounds – I am on to your evil plan to keep Robin captive for the next 15 years. We are not amused. /:-| Might I remind you that we are helping to keep you in food. Dang. Wrong argument. :p
***If you have dogs in the house, they’d get eaten off the tree! ***
Even after being dipped in polyeurethane? I’d think they might try one and then go “ptui” and spit them out. Or am I underestimating the garbage can nature of dog tummies?
****This may not be immediately obvious to anyone who hasn’t tortured herself with cut-out cookies, but not every rolled cookie dough takes fancy designs well.****
Yes, torture is exactly right. I am a drop cookie, or occasionally scoop-and-flatten cookie, cookie baker, but I made an effort with rolled dough once because I have a nice dog-bone shaped cookie cutter and I wanted to bring them to out training class’s Christmas party. Despite cold dough, a floured board, and a sharp cookie cutter, the cutting-out process was a disaster. After a series of curses the dough turned into drop cookies.
Would these make drop cookies? (Or scoop and flatten ones?)
I drop tablespoons into a bowl of sugar–roll them about–and put the on the baking sheet. They don’t have to be complicated.
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Just got back from 2 weeks in Ellsworth, Maine. Heaven, even if it was rather rainy.
In honor of that state’s blueberry season, I offer you the quintessential blueberry pie recipe. This is based on year of research visiting friends who live in a blueberry field. My husband loves to pick berries and each day we tried different recipes for using them. (This was many years ago, well before menopause was even a thought in my mind) We scarffed down all the creations, but agree that this is THE BEST. It also works nicely with raspberries, too.
GLAZED BLUEBERRY PIE
1 quart fresh blueberries (you may want more to fill the crust)
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cold water
2 tablespoons lemon juice (maybe more if you like it)
**Cook all above until thick, but not solid, stirring constantly
Add
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter
**Put berries in a pre-baked pie shell. Pour the mixture over them.
Serve with whipped cream
If you need a pie crust recipe, this is a good one for a double crust from an old Fannie Farmer cookbook.
Sift 2 cups pastry or 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour with 1 teaspoon salt
Cut in 2/3 cup shortening
Then add 1/3 cup ICE water
For a pre-baked crust, baked 450 degrees F for about 12 minutes until it’s looks prettily browned. (I assume ‘you’ know to weigh the crust with dry beans while baking it empty. Otherwise it will puff up like crazy.)
While browsing used bookshops in Maine, I found two Peter Dickinson mysteries: one a paperback and one a first American edition. Fun finds in the great north.
Oh, sigh. Wild Maine blueberries. I would kill for . . . We have big fat squashy blue berries in England but they aren’t *blueberries.* There aren’t too many things that make me really *seriously* nostalgic for Maine, and most of them seem to be FOOD.
I prick my empty pie crust rather than use beans.
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You can always try it with raspberries. Or a mix of squashy berries (British blue) and something more credible. Can you get frozen Maine berries flown in? Any contacts back in Maine? Then mix them with the local. Worth a try.
Oh, seriously yay! I’m going to save that up for Christmas. And washing machines are awesome things to celebrate. New ones which actually work are something of a miraculous event. Thanks for the recipe!
***Oh, all of the ones I’m talking about I DREW***
When I was in college, my mother sent me a pterodactyl birthday cake. I still have the template she drew for that, but I’ve never had the courage to try it myself. She made it from my favorite that I always asked for on my birthday, tomato cake.
The reason she made me a pterodactyl is another story.
My parents moved into house with a meter cover in the kitchen. It annoyed her. It stuck out. So she painted some scenery on it. Then she added some more scenery, a barn here, some sheep there, a stream down there, a bridge, a few ducks, a fisherman…by the time she finished she had the whole wall covered. The meter cover was invisible.
I looked over the mural carefully when I came home. “Where’s the pterodactyl?” (She had everything else in it.) She was taken aback for only a moment.
“You see that hill over there? With the trees on it? The pterodactyls are hunting on the other side of the hill.”
I teased her about pterodactyls for years.
I like your mother. :)
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Ooh, I’ll trade recipes!
This is a recipe for eggless, dairyless zucchini bread. I made it a few days ago because we’re currently in the Dormition Fast (I love Wikipedia). It would also be suitable for any vegan types out there.
Fasting Zucchini Bread
6 T water
1 c oil
2 c sugar
2c grated zucchini
3 c flour
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1/2 t nutmeg
1 t cinnamon
1 T vanilla (yes, a tablespoon)
1/2 c chopped nuts
Mix water, oil, and sugar. Add grated zucchini and beat. Add flour, soda, and salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, and nuts. Mix. Pour into two 9×5 inch greased loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Cool and remove from pans.
You don’t need to use a mixer for this–it goes together nicely by hand. Of course if you’re short like me, that means holding the bowl in the crook of your arm because the counter’s too high and THAT means hoping the batter doesn’t go all over what you’re wearing. Or wearing an apron which I always forget to take off.
Golly. ‘dormition’. That’s a word and a half. In context of discussing sleep difficulties and ear plugs I find it a trifle ironic. I’d have trouble going that long meatless–do any of the faithful start having dizzy spells by the end?
This seems like an AWFUL lot of sugar (especially during a fast??), but I fully support 1 T vanilla. :) And counters tend to be too high for me too . . . not because I’m short but because I have gorilla length arms and there’s this COUNTER in the way.
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I’d have trouble going that long meatless
it’s amazing how different people are :) I’d have no problem going meatless for 2 weeks. Although I wouldn’t find it easy being full-time vegetarian. (I actually found Dr Peter D’Adamo’s books “Eat Right 4 Your Type” quite interesting. He explains how some people need more meat than others. Quite a few of the foods that were supposedly “bad” for me I actually really don’t like.)
And counters tend to be too high for me too . . .
::sigh:: yeah…. when you are 5’1″ there are a lot of high counters. When we built the new house we made all the counters the right height for *us*. :p
Well, I like being tall, and the long reach does have its uses. But the hands dangling around the knees are . . . inconvenient at other times. :)