A Gingerbread Tradition

For me, Christmas is all about traditions. Growing up, we had a number of traditions we did during the holidays and I looked forward to them every year. As I grew older, I helped to keep them going. Setting up the living room on Christmas Eve with the Christmas glasses for egg nog, liqueur glasses & bottle of Sherry for the toast to absent friends, a CD player for music, re-arranging the furniture.  All of it was part of our Christmas morning tradition.


Now, with my own family, we too are developing our own traditions as well as continuing ones I had with my family and those Andrew had with his. It's a blending of our two families into our own. 


One tradition I've started with Charlotte is to bake gingerbread cookies. Yesterday, Charlotte and I went to the bulk barn and picked out the candy to decorate the cookies. When we got home we donned our aprons. Wearing the apron that I had when I was a little girl, she helped me make the dough for the cookies. One of her favourite parts of making cookies is turning on the mixer and watching the ingredients mix. She loves to crack the eggs and add them to the mixture and is getting better at cracking them without the shell falling into the bowl.

Adding the lemon zest

One final mix

Once the mixture was made and had rested in the fridge for a couple of hours, we cut out the shapes. Charlotte is like her Mom and loves to eat the cookie dough. Luckily, it makes a lot of dough ;) Interestingly enough, she wanted to make more round cookies in the dough rather than the actual gingerbread men and women. 

Cutting out the shapes

But, we did manage to get some of the traditional little dudes an dudettes and she decorated her first one tonight. That seemed to be her favourite part.

Ta-Da!

Here is the recipe from allrecipes.com. The orange zest really adds a nice flavour. Also, the original called for dark corn syrup, I used molasses.


Gingerbread Men

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tablespoons orange zest
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. 
   
   1. 
      
   Cream the butter and the sugar together. Add the egg and mix well. Mix in the orange peel and molasses. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, ground cloves and salt, mixing until well combined. Chill dough for at least 2 hours, I like to chill overnight. 

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes using cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until cookies are firm and lightly toasted on the edges.

I hope as she grows up, Charlotte continues to enjoy the traditions we're trying to develop with her and Harrison. I hope that she'll look forward to making the gingerbread cookies with me each year and once she has her own children (in about 30 years), she'll continue it with them and look back at the traditions we had with fond memories as I do with mine.