1989 2ND PLACE: GREAT-GRANDMA'S GINGERBREAD C

      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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