Gingerbread People

I was really excited to make gingerbread people again this year. I ripped the recipe out of a Food Network Magazine last year, and I made sure that I kept it so I could use it again. It even made it through several attempts by Camden to eat through all of my cookbooks on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. What made this year's cookies even better was that I also made my own icing, which turned out perfect! Aren't they adorably sweet and  chubby?

After mixing all of the ingredients and rolling out the (really sticky) dough, I had to chill it in the refrigerator for 2 hours. Then, after cutting out my people, I had to refrigerate for 15 more minutes before transferring them to the cookie sheet and then the oven. If the dough isn'tcompletely cold, it sticks and stretches and the people turn out having elongated heads, or oddly shaped limbs.

Last year I borrowed my mother in law's gingerbread man cookie cutter. While Christmas shopping this year, I purchased a little man and a little lady. The cookies were a lot thicker and chewier this year, not as dog-biscuit-hard as usual gingerbread cookies. I attribute that to my crappy rolling pin, which stuck so much (even when floured) that I eventually stopped trying to roll the dough thinner.


To pipe the icing I used I trick that I saw somewhere recently. I think it was Pinterest.  You take your piping bag and put it in a glass. I used a tall beer glass because I wanted to put a lot of icing in at once. Then, you fold the extra plastic at the top over the edges of the glass. With a spoon or a cup, plop your icing right down into it.

 This was my first batch, which were my testers. Testers taste especially great with a glass of cold milk, by the way. The first few did not turn out so great. I always have to get myself adjusted to the piping bag and the consistency of the icing. This was homemade royal icing, so I didn't know how well it was going to work. Luckily, I got used to it pretty quickly and it worked just fine. It dries really fast too, so I didn't need to have cookies all around the house cooling. I could stack them pretty soon after I made them.

Do you like the girls' aprons? I thought they looked really cute. I tried giving the ladies faces, but they just looked like boys with skirts. I tried giving them hair, but that was a disaster. So faceless women in aprons they were. No social message intended. 

I brought the cookies over to all three Christmas events, Christmas Eve dinner with Mom, Christmas morning with the in-laws, and Christmas dinner with Dad. I still have a handful left at home and some leftover dough and icing in the refrigerator.

Last year, with just a few cookies left, Greg decided he would try to decorate a few himself. When I came back into the room, he'd started to make these gingerbread ghettobread men. This year, I asked him, again, to create an alternate lifestyle cookie. He picked the workaholicbread man. Ok, not as funny as last year's...but the decorating was hilariously awful (on both our parts). Can you guess which one of us decorated which ones?

2010 Ghetto Boys

2011 Workaholics

Recipe adapted from Food Network Magazine December (I think) 2010 Issue

Mix in a medium bowl:

31/2 cups of flour (sifted)
1 teaspoon each of baking soda and salt
1tablespoon of ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each ground cloves and allspice

Mix in a larger bowl:

6 tablespoons of melted butter
1 tablespoon of melted shortening
2/3 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup of molasses
1 egg beaten in with mixer


Beat the flour mixture into the molasses mixture in two additions. Divide the dough in half, wrap in plastic, and pat to 1/2 inch thick. Chill for two hours. When the dough is done chilling, preheat the oven to 350. On a floured surface, roll each piece of dough to 1/4 inch thick. (Mine were slightly thicker). Cut with your cookie cutter and arrange 1 inch apart on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. (I used a silicone baking mat like this, which worked great.) Chill for 15 minutes. (I did this before transferring my cookies to the sheet, so they didn't stretch in transport). Bake until the cookies are golden around the edges. 10-12 minutes. (In my oven it was 10 minutes, even for the thicker cookies, because I didn't want them to get too hard.) Transfer them (after a few minutes) to a rack to cool. Then decorate.

The Icing: From here
3 egg whites
4 cups of powdered sugar

In a small to medium bowl, whisk 3 egg whites until they get frothy. Then, while mixing, add 4 cups of powdered sugar. Keep mixing until the icing is smooth. Use the method I explained earlier to add the icing to a piping bag, snip off the tip of the bag so you have a thin stream of icing, and then decorate!

Thanks for reading my thoughts about food! Happy Holidays!

Brussel Sprout Bandwagon

During Thanksgiving, I noticed that a certain vegetable had recipes "sprouting" up everywhere, like here and here. Being the trend follower that I am (Actually, I'm not at all... I just bought a pair of leggings recently, which came into style, what, 2 years ago? )

Well, I decided to try the brussel sprouts anyway. I have had them maybe once before in my life and it was so long ago that I don't even remember what I thought about them. When checking out recipes on food blogs, and magazines, they looked bright green, crispy, and pretty darn good, so I decided to give them a shot. Greg was not so adventurous at first, so I did what any good wife would do; I bought them and made them for dinner so when he got home from work they were waiting on his plate. Wisely, he did not complain.


To make this dish, I started by preheating my oven to 425 and taking my fresh sprouts out of the fridge.

Then I cut them in half and blanched them. To do that, get a pot of water boiling, throw in the sliced sprouts, and fish them out after about 45 seconds. They won't be very tender, but don't worry, you'll be cooking them in the oven as well.

Then, I drizzled olive oil over them (about a tablespoon) and added some salt, pepper, chunks of yellow onion and a teaspoon of minced garlic.

I spread them out on a cookie sheet and sprinkled them with white wine vinegar. Then, I baked them for 12 minutes. (I thought that Bobby Flay's recipe in the link above, which has an addition of quartered potato, looked awesome as did the one with pancetta. Anything to disguise the fact that we're eating a vegetable, right?)

Here is the end result. I especially like that the white wine vinegar cut into the very slight bitterness of the sprouts. I used about a half a tablespoon. I'm actually really happy with how these turned out. They seemed really versatile. I think cooking them with shallots or mushrooms and Parmesan would taste really good as well. So, jump on...the bandwagon is a yummy place to be!

 Thanks for reading my thoughts about food!