1989 2nd Place: Great Grandma's Gingerbread Cookies

Directions

1. Preparation Time: 30 min
2. Chilling Time: Overnight
3. Baking Time: 10minutes
4. 1. Cream shortening and sugar in mixing bowl, beat in Large eggs, one at a time. Mix water and baking soda in small bowl till dissolved. Add in baking soda mix and sorghum to butter mix. Sift 5 1/2 c. of the flour, the spices and salt together. Blend into dough. Divide dough into 4 balls. Wrap in plastic wrap. Flatten and chill overnight.
5. 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 till puffed, 10 to 12 min. Don't overbake.
6. 3. When cold, decorate with buttercream frosting and/or possibly candies as desired. Sorghum gives these cookies a special flavor, but molasses can be used as a substitute.
7. 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.
8. "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.
9. "Introductions made which 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!"