On Gingerbread

I'd like to take you back, friends and enemies, to a simpler time. A time before grad school. Before texting was a way of life. Before full-time jobs and having bills to pay. A time before you could drink legally. A time when movie franchises like "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" and "X-Men" were in their infancy and still held so much promise.

Let's call this magical time "Christmas 2002." HoneyBunny, my high-school boyfriend, and I were no longer dating. We were, however, BFF's and he had moved into my parents' guest room after we both dropped out of Kenyon College to go on "sabbatical;" a sabbatical that would end with him joining the army and me back in school at OSU. Like I said, simpler times.

In preparation of the theatrical release of "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," we watched "LOTR:FOTR" every day for a week, often twice a day, while decorating the house for Christmas. We also made gingerbread cookies and decorated them to look like members of the fellowship and characters from the books:

Clockwise: Saruman, Elrond, Treebeard, Galadriel, Arwen, Gollum/Smeagol

Clockwise: Gandalf, Boromir (with the Horn of Gondor), Frodo (with frosting Sting on his belt), and Aragorn.

We totally saw LOTR:TT twice on opening day...and ended up seeing it 5 times in the theaters before the month was over. Though the pictures were taken almost a decade ago, the cookies are still in a Ziploc container sitting in the back of the garage refrigerator. Yes, we are just that awesome.

***

Now it's 7 years later and life is more complicated. The HB's out of the army, I'm out of grad school. We're still BFF's but we haven't seen each other for more than a week straight since he moved to Alaska. We're both divorced. We can drink legally and do so often - possibly to the detriment of our health. Movies that we'd be willing (or have the time and money) to see twice on opening day are few and far between.

But the gingerbread remains the same. In the past my mom has made the dough, rolled it, and baked it. I'm just there to pick out the cookie-cutter shapes and frost them once they're cool. That's the Simple Times way of doing things, though. And I'm a Grown-Up. With a Mostly-Complicated-Life. So this year I decided to tackle the gingerbread making process from start to finish.

Simply Wonderful Vegan Gingerbread

a veganized version of the "Gingerbread Cookies" recipe from Wilton's "Christmas!" Recipe & Idea Book 1992

8 cups flour

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 cup molasses

3 eggs worth of Ener-G egg replacer (4 1/2 teaspoons powder + 6 tbs warm water)

1 cup vegan butter, softened

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix 3 cups of flour and all the remaining ingredients in the mixer at low speed until blended. Increase the speed to medium and mix until very smooth. Reduce speed to low and slowly add the remaining 5 cups of flour, one cup at a time. The dough will get very stiff, so you may have to add and mix the last cup of flour by hand. If the dough seems too dry (as mine did, egg substitute is not as liquid-y as real eggs), add extra tablespoons of warm water until the dough is doughy. Chill for about an hour and then return to room temperature before rolling. Bake 8-12 minutes depending on the size of the cookie.

Here's the rolling station. My mom has perfected many secret-special ways of making perfect, addictive, legendary Christmas cookies. Mom Tip #948: Roll the dough between two, lightly floured sheets of wax paper. #196: A marble rolling pin is way better than a wooden one.

Once the dough is all rolled out, cut some delicious shapes. Mom Tip #763: Flour the cookie cutter in between cuts so the shapes don't stick.

I decided to do a few trays of tiny, bite-sized gingerbread men. A few trays of bells and trees. A tray of giant men. And a few trays of moose/deer of varying sizes. It all depends on your patience, really. Mom Tip #521: The larger the cookies, the quicker you'll go through the dough.

After about 4 trays of cookies, my arms gave out and I called in reinforcements (AKA Roomie and his rowing muscles). He turned out to be something of a rolling pin prodigy. Check out a forthcoming FB album of Roomie making pinwheels - the most rolling-centered, labor-intensive cookie in my mom's considerable cookie repertoire. Mom Tip #117: Delegate, delegate, delegate!

And here's the finished product. You might notice that the two racks with trees and bells look much darker than the rack of men. This would be because I forgot to bake them. My mom's oven is digital. After the time runs out, it automatically reduces the heat to 150 degrees and blinks hold. When I put the bells and trees in, I forgot to set the timer and then forgot that I forgot to set the timer. When I looked over at the oven and saw it blinking "hold," I assumed that they had baked and were burning. Since they didn't look quite done, I put them in for another 2 minutes. It wasn't until my mom and I were putting the cookies into Tupperware that I realized my mistake. This is not a horrible thing (my mom assures me) so we just put them back in the oven for ten minutes and a disaster was averted. Mom Tip #324 & 325: Cookies are never ruined only unexpected & I've made every baking mistake at least once so don't feel too bad.

The cookies are as yet un-decorated (and, unfortunately, there are no fantasy epics in the theater this season) so I'm taking suggestions.

Mom Tip#1: It simply isn't Christmas without cookies.