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1989 2Nd Place: Great-grandma's Gingerbread C

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      Title: 1989 2ND PLACE: GREAT-GRANDMA'S GINGERBREAD C
 Categories: Cookies, Holiday
      Yield: 36 Servings
 
    1/2 c  Vegetable shortening
      1 c  Sugar
      3 ea Eggs
    1/2 c  Cold water
      2 ts Baking soda
      1 c  Sorghum or molasses
           All-purpose flour (5-6 cups)
      1 ts Ground cinnamon
    1/2 ts Ground cloves
      1 ts Ginger
    1/2 ts Salt
 
  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
 
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