I’m in the throes of holiday baking right now and other than being a little tired and a LOT pregnant, I’m loving it!
So far I’ve made Thin Mints (a new recipe that I found on Pinterest and had to try!) and Buckeyes and today is Russian Tea Cake day. Russian Tea Cakes are one of my faves and I kind of love that no one else gets excited about them so there’s more for me :)
One cookie that I’m planning to make for the first time this year is gingerbread men. My mom has always made them and while I like to eat a few each year for the sake of nostalgia, they don’t rank high enough in my book to put forth the effort of making them on my own. I usually just mooch off my mom’s stash :)
But, I really think Grace will get a kick out of them and will enjoy adding the eyes, noses and mouths so I’ve decided to give them a whirl this year. Plus, as far as cookies go, they aren’t as sugary and rich as so many other things I make so it will be nice to have a “healthier” option to offer her at cookie time. {insert evil mom laugh}
A few weeks ago I asked my mom to pass my grandma’s gingerbread recipe along to me so I could make sure I had everything I needed to make them (hello molasses and allspice!). I didn’t hear back from her right away so I just let it go for a while.
Then just this weekend I asked her again when she came to spend the night. I figured she might call or email me with it when she got home or a day or so after, but no dice.
This is not like her! She’s on the ball and usually turns these kind of requests around ASAP.
We chatted on the phone this morning and I straight up told her I needed the recipe so I could get crackin’.
So, she goes and gets my grandma’s old hand-written recipe card to dictate to me over the phone.
Now, I’m known to be pretty picky about recipes.
I want THE ONE that I LOVE. Not some variation that she tried one time for kicks. She’s dared in the past to try alternate versions of things like, crunchy peanut butter in the Buckeyes (travesty!) or cool whip instead of Redi Whip on the Peaches & Cream Pancakes (scandalous!) or ginger snap men instead of gingerbread men (the horror!).
So you can bet that I confirmed a few times that this wasn’t some crunchy spicy ginger snap crappy cookie, but that it was in fact the actual soft, gingery cookies that I so fondly remember.
Her answers were a little vague. I kept getting responses like, “this is Grandma Marilyn’s recipe” and ” I can give you the other recipe I have and you can combine them”.
What?!
I don’t want to “combine” recipes! I want THE ONE!
You know, the one I LOVE! The one that floods me with memories of Grandma’s apartment and decorations and traditions. The one that I’m hanging all my hope on!
That one.
So she starts dictating Grandma’s recipe…
1/3 cup Oleo (what the what?)
1 cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups molasses (that’s a lot of molasses!)
1/2 cup cold water (who the heck puts water in cookies?!)
7 cups sifted flour….
WAIT! 7 CUPS OF FLOUR??? SEVEN CUPS?
As in 7 which is the number that comes after 6?
As in “are you sure it’s not really a 1” that you think is a 7?
I pretty much freaked out at the flour step, but kept jotting down the rest which was a litany of spices, salt, and baking soda dissolved in more WATER.
So the recipe is all written down and I’m just kind of staring at it while I still have mom on the phone. I’m trying to see if I can easily make a half batch so that I’m not using 7 CUPS OF FLOUR resulting in enough gingerbread men for every Salvation Army bell ringer in the Metro Detroit area.
But dividing the 1/3 cup of Oleo (which, as it turns out, is margarine – GROSS) is starting to get into weird measurement territory.
So mom plows ahead telling me she’s going to give me her other recipe too.
“Just start writing it down” she says.
So I do.
Even though I’m still somewhat convinced that this second recipe is an imposter that I don’t really want.
But, as I’m writing it out I have to admit that it’s sounding much more reasonable…
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup molasses
2 2/3 cups flour
This is a recipe I can wrap my mind around.
But I’m still freaked out that it may not be the one.
Then it all comes out…
Mom tells me that she kind of freaked when I asked her for the recipe in the first place. It conjured up images of years past where she pulled out grandma’s sentimental hand-written recipe card and also freaked out about the oleo and the 7 cups of flour. That she’d look at it and think it sounded so odd. That she’d pull out her other recipe to compare and end up making the second recipe with a few tweaks to the spices to more closely mimic grandma’s original recipe.
I find out that this gingerbread recipe brings out the same panicked reaction every year that it’s dusted off at Christmas time.
We both started cracking up!
I could just imagine myself passing this recipe along to my girls someday saying, “Ok, get out your recipe card and jot this down.”
Then (if they are anything like me and inherit a love of cooking and baking and a sense about how much of each ingredient is typically used in a batch of cookies) I’ll get to the part with the 7 CUPS OF FLOUR and they will have the same double-take reaction.
They’ll ask me if I’m sure I’m reading it right. If I’m certain it’s a 7 and not a 1.
And I’ll laugh and tell them this story and I’ll have them flip their recipe card over and write down the “other” recipe with the various tweaks to get the spice combo to mimic grandma’s recipe just like I did today on the phone with my mom.
I haven’t made the alternate recipe yet, but I’m hopeful that it will yield the soft, gingery cookies that I’m hoping for. And I’ve got to say that I’ve gotten a big kick out of this whole recipe debacle and how much it’s made me remember my grandma today.
How I wish I could call her up and interrogate her about those 7 CUPS OF FLOUR, but I’ll settle for smiling all day as I think about her and her crazy gingerbread :)