Making and decorating gingerbread men … plus! (We didn’t just stick to the men.) After the cookies were baked and cooled, but before we decorated them, I told Shannon that it never occurred to me that I don’t actually know how to do this! I hadn’t decorated cookies for YEARS!!! So anyway, don’t laugh too hard! Here are some of them…
My aunt Ruthie makes the best gingerbread cookies around, so I got the recipe from her. It actually comes from the Mennonite Community Cookbook.
Old Fashioned Ginger Cookies (Leb Kuchen) That’s how the recipe title is written… makes it seem authentic, doesn’t it?
2 cups shortening, melted
3 cups sorghum molasses
1 cup sugar
8 – 10 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. soda
1 Tbsp. ginger
1 Tbsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or sour milk
Heat molasses and sugar together. When sugar is dissolved, add shortening and stir until melted. Remove from heat. Cool to lukewarm. Sift flour, soda, salt, and spices together. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with sour milk. Stir until a medium-soft dough is formed.
Work dough with hands for 5 min. Let chill in refrigerator for several hours. (They’re not kidding about that. It’s a soft dough. Ruthie said she usually lets it chill overnight.) Turn dough onto lightly floured board and roll 1/4″ thick. Cut with large round cookie cutter.
Glaze with a beaten egg; dip a small piece of cheesecloth in beaten egg and rub lightly over cookie. Place 1″ apart on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 20 – 25 min. (I didn’t bake them quite 20 min.) This is the soft chewy cookie that was a favorite of grandmother’s day. It is still very popular among many Mennonite families. (I didn’t write that, it says that right in the recipe.) Makes 8 dozen large cookies.
Then, let the decorating begin!
It was my top pick of everything! I think Linda made it. There were several different kinds of cookies, some buttermints, choc covered Ritz sandwiches, caramel/chocolate candy, mice 
Carefully twist cookies apart; set aside the halves with cream filling. Save plain halves for another use. In a microwave, melt choc chips and shortening; stir until smooth. Holding each cherry by the stem, dip in melted chocolate, then press onto the bottom of a kiss. Place on the cream filling of cookie, with cherry stem extending beyond cookie edge. For ears, place slivered almonds between the cherry and kiss. Refrigerate until set. With green gel, pipe holly leaves on the cream. With red gel, pipe berries between leaves and pipe eyes on each chocolate kiss.
Store in an airtight container at room temp. Yield: 2 dozen.
Remove from heat; gradually stir in remaining ice cream. Return to heat; cook without stirring to 244 (firm-ball stage). Immediately pour, without stirring, into a buttered 9×13 pan. Let cool until firm. Invert candy onto a baking sheet. Melt candy coating; spread over candy. Sprinkle with nuts. Cut into 1″ squares. Yield: About 3 1/2 pounds.
Side note: That oval plate they’re on is from a set of dishes that my brother brought home for me from Romania when he was over there for a few years. Very beautiful set! I’m almost scared to use them for fear I’ll break one. 
…it is my most prized possession in my entire cookbook collection. It was given to me by my grandma (the one who makes the brown sugar pie) and she got it from her mother, so it was my great-grandmother’s cookbook! It was given to Great Grandma in 1943. I feel extremely privileged to now own it and it’s on my list of top 10 things to quick grab if there would be a fire. There is hand-writing in it… like notes written beside recipes, variations on things like strawberry shortcake and split pea soup and check marks written beside some recipes, probably her favorite ones. Also, tucked in hit-n-miss are a bunch of loose recipes, mostly written on regular scratch paper, but there’s a tapioca recipe written on a deposit slip that has my great grandma and grandpa’s names on it and a chop suey pickles recipe written on a piece of old wallpaper.
She also decided we should wear “cookie baking beads”. She had some in her toybox, so we each wore them… you can see hers on a picture.
and mix partially with a wooden spoon until marbleized. Drop the dough into 3-Tablespoon mounds 
Fill the coffee pot with water to 8 cups and pour into coffee maker. Turn it on and run it thro’ just like you’d be making coffee. While that’s being made, put a little over 1/2 cup of sugar into a 2-qt pitcher. When the tea is done, pour it into the pitcher 
then fill it up with ice
to within 1″ of the top. Stir till ice is about all gone. It’s cool, but not cold by this time, so if we drink it right away, we serve it “on the rocks”, as my dad would say.
I really need a lemon slice to put on the side of this mug! 
Same assortment. Different angle.
Linda stirring away at something. She had to cook that stuff for 5 min and when Izzy cried, the deal was that one of us either had to take care of the baby or keep stirring her stuff while she took the baby… going by the picture, guess which was picked. 
There’s Linda again, front and center… sorry, didn’t try that! Looks like Sandra is dying laughing about something at the sink… can tell it even more on my bigger original picture.
Getting things done and we’ve got something to show for it!
Ruthie Sue making frosting… her own special wouldn’t-want-to-eat-it-anymore recipe. She is 7 (right, Rufusannie? it’s her dau) and looked for work in the kitchen several times throughout the day… a budding cook! 
