Don't eat the Gingerbread men!

When I used to tell my son the story of the Gingerbread man, he would always want me to stop before it got trapped inside the fox's jaws. As in all other fairy tales, he would want a happier ending, where smart ginger bread men escaped into the big wilderness for safety. However, we had not tasted the gingerbread men yet when we did make that picture book a night time favourite. What followed was a lot of catch me if you can with the rhyme,

'Run, Run as fast as you can, You can't catch me I am the Ginger bread man'.

We had a lot of fun with the story, and the enacting of it.

It took me another decade and a half before starting to tentatively find my way around baking, along with Renjini, the protagonist of my novel 'The Spice Box', which is scheduled for 2022. For a long while, I had considered eggless baking a near impossible feat. How I regret all those wasted years!

Crisp, brown and a medley of flavours, the gingerbread cookies are truly one of the most Indian of cookies. The use of ginger and molasses give it a twist that is incredibly close to home. My version of the cookies is a loose adaptation of that from Shivesh (https://bakewithshivesh.com/eggless-gingerbread-cookies/).

The Gingerbread has an interesting story behind its popularity. It was Queen Elizabeth who instructed her baker to do cookies in the likeness of her aristocratic guests, and that set the trend of these anthropomorphic culinary delights. No less than the Bard himself rhapsodised about their delights in Love's Labour Lost as

'And I had but one penny in the world, thou should'st have it to buy gingerbread.'

My earliest memory of these cookies is the witch's Gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel. Across ages, the gingerbread biscuits and cakes have captured popular imagination in stories and traditions.

However, just as we do hope that grandpa, grandma, the cow, the horse, the pig and the piglets, the cock and the fox do not get to eat our gingerbread men, neither do we intend to make a meal of the gorgeous ginger bread man, so much do we love it. So when I did finally bake these gingerbread cookies, they took on Christmas shapes, and we celebrated a nearly non existent winter in Kerala with these beautiful ones.

All the cookies were decorated by the kids, me not having the patience or the skills for the same.

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Recipe

Ingredients

Whole wheat flour 0.5 Cups

Refined flour 0.5 Cups

Brown sugar 0.5 Cups

Molasses 0.25 Cups

Salted Butter 0.5 Cups

Baking powder 0.5 teaspoon

Baking soda 0.25 teaspoon

Ginger powder 0.5 teaspoon

Cinnamon powder 1 teaspoon

Vanilla extract 1 teaspoon

Orange Zest 0.5 teaspoon

Milk 1 teaspoon

Method

Make sure that the butter is cold when you add this to the dry ingredients. Crumble it into the flour, Add the baking powder, ginger powder, cinnamon powder and vanilla extract. Mix well, Add the sugar and the molasses and mix them into a dough. Use a teaspoon of milk if required to bring them all together. Refrigerate for half an hour.

Spread the dough into a thin rectangle and cut out the shapes. Place them gently on a baking powder and bake them at 180 degrees for 12 minutes or till brown.

Let them cool down completely.

I used a mix of icing sugar and milk for the icing. You can decorate them with sprinkles and chocolate buttons, or anything that you fancy. Its best left to kids!

They are breeze to make and have a long shelf life, so that makes it great for cookie tins and for gifting, which is the best reason to bake them. They also look adorable hanging on the branches of a tall Christmas tree.

Do try baking them and let me know how you enjoy them.

And I can't wait to share with you a taste of these and more in 'The Spice Box' in 2022. Wishing you a season of Joy till my next one!