Get curious about… Gingerbread!
This month’s guide is all about Gingerbread!
The original Good Witch’s Bakery at Santa’s Village in Southern California.
I haven’t figured out how to make a clickable Table of Contents in Substack, but to help you navigate these emails, here’s one that’s non-clickable. Just to give you an idea of the fun that’s in store and a general idea of where to find it.
Storytime.
Interesting gingerbread-y things to read, watch, or listen to.
10 books about gingerbread to read with your kids.
Mmmmmm…. gingerbread (recipes).
Downloadable Discovery & Play Guide, full of snacks, poems, videos, songs, games, and simple activities to do with your children, all centered around this month’s theme: Gingerbread.
““When we lived in Indiana, once in a while my mother used to get some sorghum and ginger and make some gingerbread. It wasn’t often and it was our biggest treat. One day I smelled the gingerbread and came into the house to get my share while it was still hot. My mother had baked me three gingerbread men. I took them out under a hickory tree to eat them..””
Storytime.
At some point in the late eighties or early nineties, a family friend living in Germany sent my mom a gigantic metal box full of terrible cookies. The box was cool and I’m pretty sure my mom still has it and uses it to store greeting cards. But the cookies were dry and had nuts in them and every single one of them had a round piece of paper baked into the bottom of it that you were supposed to eat. They’re called lebkuchen, and as a kid who’d eaten mainly chocolate chip cookies à la Nestlé Toulouse her entire life, these German so-called cookies were inedible.
The “cookies” were contained in a box that looked a lot like this. It’s the thought that counts!
The fact that you can still order these monstrous generous gingerbread chests makes me think that my lack of appreciation for them was due to immature taste buds, but I can’t swear by that. I’ve since discovered a chocolate-covered version of lebkuchen from a company called Leckerlee, and those I can vouch for. Super yummy and expensive AF so they would make an excellent gift. They even come in adorable tins. Probably don’t share with your kids and their immature taste buds.
(The pieces of paper baked into the bottoms are called oblaten and I guess they’re to keep the cookies from sticking to the pan? I still don’t get it but it’s a thing.)
Interesting gingerbread-y things to read, watch, or listen to.
To whet your appetite for this month’s Discovery & Play Guide, here are three fun and/or interesting things I came across as I went down the gingerbread rabbit hole.
Giant gingerbreads at Shane’s Confectionery in Philadelphia, PA.
➵ Apparently, way way back in gingerbread’s family tree, you’ll find something called gingebras with was made by “boiling breadcrumbs and honey with ginger and other spices like licorice and pepper.” Like I needed another reason to be thankful I don’t live in medieval France. Learn more in this short episode from the Christmas Past Podcast.
➵ Did you know that Haitian architecture played a major role in the popularity of gingerbread-style homes in the United States? I had no idea, but I find that sort of history so interesting. If you’re curious to learn more, check out this short piece from House Digest.
➵ Emily Garland “wanted to do woodwork, but I also like baking” so obviously she became an expert gingerbread house architect. What else! Watch her at work, from conception to construction, in this video from WIRED.
Porch with gingerbread detailing in Nicholas County, Kentucky (November 1940). Image Credit: John Vachon for Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress
10 books about gingerbread to read with your kids.
There are a gajillion versions of The Gingerbread Man and I read at least half of them to find you the very best. Plus a Hansel & Gretel. This highly subjective process includes testing by my own human children, my personal feelings of enjoyment about the book, and the goal of offering you a variety of stories and styles of writing and illustrating. Also, even if my kids loooooooved a book but I couldn’t stand to read it more than once, it gets the axe. I do the dirty work so you don’t have to.
The Gingerbread Man retold by Jim Aylesworth, illustrated by Barbara McClintock
Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers by Lisa Campbell Ernst
Catch That Cookie! by Hallie Durand, illustrated by David Small
The Gingerbread Boy by Richard Egielski
Ginger Bear by Mini Grey
The Ninjabread Man by C.J. Leigh, illustrated by Chris Gall
The Gingerbread Man Loose In the School by Laura Murray, illustrated by Mike Lowery
Gingerbread for Liberty by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch
Hansel & Gretel by Bethan Woollvin
I’ve linked to Amazon for the sake of convenience, but I love AbeBooks, ThriftBooks, and eBay for finding used copies of books. And of course nothing beats your local public library.
“Perníkovy Panáček sells the yummiest gingerbread in Prague, and it’s cute as a button to boot.” Image credit: Madison Krigbaum.
Mmmmmm… gingerbread.
These are my two very favorite gingerbread recipes. To me, they taste like winter and Christmas, and both of them make for an excellent breakfast. Neither recipe is for roll-out, cut-out cookies that you’d use to make gingerbread men, but as soon as I find a perfect version of that, I promise to share.
Soft and Chewy Molasses Spice Cookies: This recipe is from America’s Test Kitchen, and supposedly it makes 22 cookies, but that number doesn’t take into account the dough that goes missing at some point between mixing and baking. I’m not naming names, but it was me. I double the amount of salt, and you can get away with subbing in different spices if you like. These cookies are soft and spicy and go great with a cup of coffee or tea and you should bake them pronto.
Dark Molasses Winter Cake: I follow this recipe almost exactly, with two significant changes - I bake it in two loaf pans rather than a cake pan, and I don’t frost it. Instead, I slice it thick, toast it, and eat it with a dollop of homemade whipped cream. Sometimes I put orange zest into the whipped cream. As I said above: This makes for an excellent breakfast. I wrap one loaf in plastic wrap and it will keep on the counter for up to a week. I slice the second loaf, wrap it super duper tight, and freeze it. You can toast individual slices straight from frozen when you’re ready to eat.
Quote of the Day
“And had I but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread.” —William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost
Gingerbread Guide.
Are you all revved up now and ready to have some gingerbread-themed fun with the small humans in your life? The Gingerbread Discovery & Play Guide is full of snacks, poems, videos, songs, games, and simple activities to do with your children. It’s a PDF, so you can print it out if you prefer to go analog, but the formatting is intended to make it easy to use on your mobile device.
Discovery & Play Guides are for paid subscribers. Upgrade, then CLICK HERE for access to your downloadable Gingerbread guide.
These guides are full of lots of ideas, so as always, just choose what looks fun and easy. And let me know if you have any questions or feedback - I can't wait to hear how it goes. Now I’m off to bake some of those molasses cookies with my kids and eat an obscene amount of the dough.
Take care, polar bear!
Love, Kathryn