Merry Christmas! Plus a Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

“I can’t remember a time when we didn’t bake gingerbread men,” said my sister Joanne at our annual cookie exchange last Friday.

The year Joanne was born, my mother ordered a cookie cookbook from the Farm Journal magazine. Today, the pages of Best-Ever Cookies are stained and yellowed and the mustard hardcover is taped and worn (the jacket lost long ago), and Joanne has seven sons and one daughter, and but the Burkholders still make gingerbread men every year.

For the last few years, Mom mixes up the dough, I help her bake them, and anyone who comes to our cookie exchange— my sisters and sisters-in-law and most of their children who aren’t in school or at jobs, gets a chance to help decorate. We fill icing bags in with colored buttercream icing and pipe on eyes, smiles, hair, and clothing.

“This girl needs a dress,” my niece, Eva said. “And this one has no hair.” At four years old, she’s too young to manage the icing bags, but she could instruct me.

Joanne hosted us at her house this year. She and her husband, Lamar, live on a fourteen-acre farmette in Berks County with their eight children. They keep cows, sheep, and pigs. Lamar works full-time in sales for a construction company and Joanne homeschools. They run a tight ship; they have to. “Sometimes we feel like we’re running in front of train,” Joanne has admitted.

But for her children, being homeschooled includes perks like arranging to have off school to decorate gingerbread men with your cousins.

We call it a cookie “exchange” because anyone who wants to can bring along plates filled with one or two kinds of cookies and then trade with the others. That way everyone gets a variety.

Sometimes people outside our family act amazed about us baking gingerbread cookies, thinking that we must have some exotic recipe. We don’t. The recipe uses common ingredients and I find them easier to bake than most rolled sugar cookies I’ve tried.

Gingerbread Men Recipe from the 1980 Farm Journal Cookie Cookbook

• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup shortening
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup molasses
• 2 Tbsp. vinegar

Mix together flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt, set aside.

Cream together shortening and sugar in mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add egg, molasses, and vinegar, beat well.

Gradually stir dry ingredients into creamed mixture, mix well. Cover and chill in refrigerator at least 3 hours. (Don’t skimp on the chilling time.)

Divide dough in fourths. Use one fourth of dough at a time, keep the rest in the fridge. Roll out the fourth on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin to 1/8″ thick. Cut with floured cookie cutters.

Place 1 1/2″ apart on lightly greased baking sheets. (Use regular baking sheets and not air-bake if you can help it. They spread out more on air-bake sheets.)

Bake at 375 for 5 to 6 minutes or until no imprint remains when lightly touched. Cool on baking sheet for a few seconds then cool on baking racks or tea towels.

Make 5 dozen 4″ cookies. Decorate with buttercream frosting.

You can use this recipe to make gingerbread houses — you just need a gingerbread cookie cutter set to create the walls and roof. We used to make royal icing and paste on gumdrops, nonpareils, and zebra gum. But that can turn into a sticky candy frenzy, so for now, we stick with the gingerbread men.

As the afternoon wore away, snow begin to fall. By the time we drove home, the ground was covered in white. Snow ended the first day of winter on a beautiful note.

Merry Christmas! May your season, whether a cozy, happy one, or one that feels sad or bittersweet, be comforted by the God who is with us.