I wanted to feature books on gingerbread. The multitude of gingerbread man, baby, girl, woman, twins, doll, bear, dog, computer mouse (joke) books out there have raised my blood sugar to dangerous levels.
Cookies are less sweet but there are some winners available - and most of them are holiday free! Read them now. Read them months from now. Still tasty.
The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? by Mo Willems. The cheek of that little duckling! He asked for a cookie - politely - and he got one. The Pigeon wants a cookie. Does anyone ever give HIM a cookie? Another delightful meltdown by the world's favorite pigeon! And cookies. And a very cute Duckling. (And too many sentence fragments.)
Cookies : Bite-size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Jane Dyer. Oooooh, Jane Dyer artwork. Now that IS sweet! Rosenthal uses the process of baking and eating cookies to introduce concepts such as the difference between "fair" and "unfair" or what it means to cooperate. And the pictures? Well, they are by Jane Dyer.
Read
Christmas Cookies : Bite-size Holiday Lessons by the same team to feel all warm and yule-tide cozy.
Gingerbread bunnies, gingerbread husbands, gingerbread hearts, wives, foxes, ponies, dreams, AAAHHH!!!
Still...
The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone. This is the version I grew up with. The text is straight forward and the illustrations are bright and snappy.
The following book is for teenagers. Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn. Cyd Charisse - no, not the long-legged actor from the '50s - is a young teen with a lot of attitude. She's been thrown out of school - again. Her mother and stepfather are fed up. So across the country to NYC, Cyd goes, to meet her biological dad and her half-siblings and, hopefully, get straightened out. There are not many cookies in this book. There is a lot of smart-a** dialogue and convoluted thinking. Cyd makes some blunders but the reader cheers her on. There might be some dated phrases here (c2004).
BTW, Gingerbread is her rag doll, her talisman and best friend. I relate. I still have my kid-hood best friend. (In the attic.)
SYNOPSIS
Embark on a baking adventure with Mimi where she will measure, mix, and bake her way to the perfect batch of gingerbread men. If Mimi can do it, so can you!
Mimi's Adventures in Baking Gingerbread Men is the third book in the Mimis Adventures in Baking series.
PURCHASE
THE AUTHOR
Alyssa’s Website / Twitter / FacebookChef Alyssa has been baking since she was a little girl in her grandmother's kitchen. Since graduating from the Culinary Institute of America she has worked for famous chefs and elite companies such as the Ritz Carlton, Tom Colicchio, Norman Van Aken and Gray Kunz. She currently is the Executive Chef at Riverwalk Bar and Grill on the Historic nook of New York City, Roosevelt Island. She also has a boutique custom cake company called AllyCakesNYC where she creates cakes to appease the imagination. Through her journey of baking she developed Mimi, her very own miniature version of herself.
As a child she loved baking and everything that came with it. As an adult and food lover she realized there was something missing when she frequented bookstores. A interactive children's cookbook. And we are not talking about a boring old cookbook for kids with lots and lots of recipes, and some pictures. Children these days have just as much interest in the kitchen as there parents do, but the ordinary cookbook is just not going to cut it. She created
Mimi's Adventures in Baking to give children and adults a way to get into the kitchen and allow the child to become the chef and the adult the assistant. With each book has one recipe and an interactive storyline the child can read, and at the end go into the kitchen and do what Mimi did! And for the "non-baking" parent, these elite pastry chef recipes are tested and ready for even the most inexperienced baker! Impress other moms with Mimi's creations!
Mimi's Adventures in Baking will also teach children how to measure, mix and bake their way through the kitchen while also giving safety tips along the way. No more boring cookbooks! Now there is a fun, exciting and educational way to learn how to bake!
By Georgia Mierswa
Ah, the holidays. A time of leisure to eat, drink, be merry, and read up on the meaning of mistletoe in Scandinavian mythology…
Taken from the Oxford Index’s quick reference overview pages, the descriptions of the wintry-themed words above are not nearly as simplistic as you might think — and even more intriguing are the related subjects you stumble upon through the Index’s recommended links. I’ll never look at a Christmas tree the same way again.
ICE-SKATING
In its simplest form dates back many centuries, [done] with skates made out of animal bones….
→ Sonja Henie (1912 – 1969)
Norwegian figure skater. In 1923 she was Norwegian champion, between 1927 and 1936 she held ten consecutive world champion titles, and between 1928 and 1936 she won three consecutive Olympic gold medals. In 1938 she began to work in Hollywood, in, among others, the film Sun Valley Serenade (1941)…
→ Sun Valley Serenade
… Such was the popularity of the Glenn Miller Band by 1941 that it just had to appear in a film, even if the story was as light as a feather…
YULE
…The name comes from Old English gēol(a) ‘Christmas Day’; compare with Old Norse jól, originally applied to a heathen festival lasting twelve days, later to Christmas…
→ Snorri Sturluson (1178 – 1241)
Icelandic historian and poet. A leading figure of medieval Icelandic literature, he wrote the Younger Edda or Prose Edda and the Heimskringla, a history of the kings of Norway from mythical times to the year 1177…
CHRISTMAS TREE
It is generally assumed that this indisputably German custom was introduced to Britain by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, but this is only partly true. The British royal family had had regular Christmas trees since the days of Princess Charlotte of Mecklenberg Strelitz…But it was certainly due to active promotion by Victoria and Albert that the fashion for trees spread so remarkably fast, at least among the better-off…
– a nuclear missile onboard a submarine.
– a control room or cockpit’s panel of indicator lights, green (good) and red (bad).
FATHER CHRISTMAS
– …Gives news of Christ’s birth, and urges his hearers to drink: ‘Buvez bien par toute la compagnie, Make good cheer and be right merry.’
– There were Yule Ridings in York (banned in 1572 for unruliness), where a man impersonating Yule carried cakes and meat through the street.
→ Clement C. Moore (1779 – 1863)
…Professor of Biblical learning and author of the poem popularly known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel (Dec. 23, 1823), widely copied, and reprinted in the author’s Poems (1844). The poem’s proper title is “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
WASSAIL
– A festive occasion that involves drinking.
– It derives from the Old Norse greeting ves heill, ‘be in good health’.
→ Christmas
… The date was probably chosen to oppose the pagan feast of the Natalis Solis Invicti by a celebration of the birth of the ‘Sun of Righteousness’…
SNOWMAN
(1978) Raymond Briggs’s wordless picturebook uses comic‐strip techniques to depict the relationship between a boy and a snowman who comes alive in the night but melts the next day….
→ Abominable Snowman
A popular name for the yeti, recorded from the early 1920s.
→ Yeti
A large hairy creature resembling a human or bear, said to live in the highest part of the Himalayas…
…comes from Tibetan yeh-teh ‘little manlike animal’.
MISTLETOE
– Traditionally used in England to decorate houses at Christmas, when it is associated with the custom of kissing under the mistletoe.
– In Scandinavian mythology, the shaft which Loki caused the blind Hod to throw at Balder, killing him, was tipped with mistletoe, which was the only plant that could harm him.
– ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ a ballad by Thomas Bayly (1839), which recounts the story of a young bride who during a game hides herself in a chest with a spring-lock and is then trapped there; many years later her skeleton is discovered.
→ Evergreens
A high proportion of the plants important in folk customs are evergreen — a fact which can be seen either in practical or symbolic terms. Folklorists have usually highlighted the latter, suggesting that at winter festivals they represented the unconquered life-force, and at funerals immortality.
GINGERBREAD
Cake or biscuits flavoured with ginger and treacle, often baked in the shape of an animal or person, and glazed.
→ Gingerbread
The gilded scroll work and carving with which the hulls of large ships, particularly men-of-war and East Indiamen of the 15th to 18th centuries, were decorated. ‘To take some of the gilt off the gingerbread’, an act which diminishes the full enjoyment of the whole.
GIFT
– …gifts have importance for tax purposes; if they are sufficiently large they may give rise to charges under inheritance tax if given within seven years prior to death (see potentially exempt transfer).
– A gift is also a disposal for capital gains tax purposes and tax is potentially payable.
– Friends, like kin, could be called upon in any emergency; they could be expected to display solidarity, lend general support, and procure co‐operation.
– Friends were therefore supposed to be alike: a friend was ideally conceived of as one’s ‘other self’.
SNOWFLAKE
The result of the growth of ice crystals in a varied array of shapes. Very low temperatures usually result in small flakes; formation at temperatures near freezing point produces numerous crystals in large flakes.
→ Ice crystal
Frozen water composed of crystalline structures, e.g. needles, dendrites, hexagonal columns, and platelets.
→ Diamond dust
Minute ice crystals that form in extremely cold air. They are so small as to be barely visible and seem to hang suspended, twinkling as they reflect sunlight.
Georgia Mierswa is a marketing assistant at Oxford University Press and reports to the Global Marketing Director for online products. She began working at OUP in September 2011.
The Oxford Index is a free search and discovery tool from Oxford University Press. It is designed to help you begin your research journey by providing a single, convenient search portal for trusted scholarship from Oxford and our partners, and then point you to the most relevant related materials — from journal articles to scholarly monographs. One search brings together top quality content and unlocks connections in a way not previously possible. Take a virtual tour of the Index to learn more.
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Fall Gingerbread
© Paula Pertile
Gingerbread, cookies, and colored pencils. And Fall! Some of my favorite things.
I tried out my new Caran d'ache Pablo colored pencils for this, and loved them. I used some Polychromos too, for more control. Both are oil based pencils, which I prefer to wax.
And do you know what? None of them broke in the electric pencil sharpener. (OK, one did, once.) But I probably jammed it in funny or something. Last time I tried to use my Prismacolors they ALL BROKE, over and over again. I was thinking part of the fault might be my sharpener, but now I know the sharpener is fine. So these new pencils are definitely 'keepers'!
I occasionally buy vintage textbooks if I like the illustrations or graphics in them. It can be a way to find an illustrator's early work. I bought this textbook, Gingerbread, part of the Field Literature Program, because one of the stories is illustrated by Will and Nicholas.
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| Textbook Cover |
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| I think this is so sweet, a nice touch to show young boys holding hands. |
This is not really a blog post, just a fully blown boast-fest. May the gods of baking forever burn my pans for such pridefullness. Against the odds I have managed to bake the perfect gingerbread cake.
We don't really have a kitchen, just a tiny square matchbox about the size of a small entrance hall (we don't have one of those either). The original cottage was a one up one downer for farm labourers, and all the cooking would have been done on a range in the main fireplace. Naturally the last thing on our landlord's mind when he inherited the cottage was to provide adequate cooking facilities. (Or adequate anything really). So for the last seven years, I have baked, roasted, fried and grilled on this. If the kitchen door (just seen right) is open, you wouldn't even know we had a cooker.
In fact, this is the second cooker we have had here; I killed the first by using it. I think I'm going to kill this one too, as it is a rickety tin-box with heating elements. The knobs claim that the two hotplates go from 1 to 5, but they lie. There is only one temperature and that is hot; unless it times out and you have to wait another five minutes for whateveritis to start cooking. Now the fan oven seems to be going the same way and to my eternal shame I burnt a fruit cake the other month. So it is a minor miracle that last night I produced a perfect pillow of gingerbread.
Even though I dickered about with the recipe, from my old trusty 1950's Good Housekeeping book. (First port of call for everything).
I made a half and half mix of black treacle and golden syrup, put in less milk and baked it using only the bottom of the oven heat. It rose slowly and majestically, a big bronzed belly of a cake with barely a crack in the top. Overnight it has gone slightly sticky and a big slab has mysteriously been cut from it. Not me. I don't even eat the stuff.
"Once you begin being naughty, it's easier to go on and on, and sooner or later, something dreadful happens." ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder
Carrie, Mary, and Laura Ingalls
Which children's book character would you most like to be for just one day?
I'd like to be Laura Ingalls, mainly because her childhood was so vastly different from mine. I would love to have three sisters, a father who plays the fiddle, a dog named Jack, and a more intimate knowledge of how food was grown, cultivated, preserved, and prepared in the late 19th century. It would also be quite cool to be called, "Half-pint."
Pioneer life was much harder than is depicted in the Little House books, so I wouldn't necessarily want to actually be Laura Ingalls Wilder -- no, just the Laura in the stories who eagerly watches Ma make Pancake Men, takes her turn at churning the cream, marvels at eating a little heart-shaped cake made from white flour, and is there to smell and taste all the bread and biscuits fresh from the wood-fired oven.
Somehow, no matter what difficulties Laura and her family faced, they got through them by pulling together and remembering what's really important, or, as Laura herself said, "It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all."
To celebrate Children's Book Week, I decided to try Laura's gingerbread recipe. It's from The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook, which is a collection of 73 recipes she collected while living with Almanzo at Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri. Apparently, she enclosed this recipe with a letter she wrote to Jennie Lindquist, an editor at Horn Book Magazine. I love seeing Laura's handwriting!
I also loved the fragrance of each of the spices as I added them by teaspoonful to the flour per Laura's instructions -- ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves. A whole cup of molasses couldn't be rushed out of the bottle; it came out slow, thick, and gooey, and so very black. Whenever I use blackstrap molasses, I think I might grow chest hairs. It just sounds so strong and commanding, I know it will make itself known in the final product. I also say "blackstrap molasses" in my deepest voice for the full effect. Try it. "Blackstrap Molasses."
Rocky Ridge Farmhouse, Mansfield, Missouri, where Laura and Almanzo lived most of their married lives (photo by maria.caprile).
Laura's writing desk, Rocky Ridge Farm.
(photo by alcott1)
The kitchen really smelled great while the gingerbread was baking -- a little like Christmas. The recipe doesn't specify size of baking pan, but I used a 9" x 9" square pan, and it was just right. It was also done in exactly 30 minutes, just like the recipe said. And the flavor? Yummmm. Positively strapping, I'd say. Robust, and not overly sweet. Lovely texture. But like any gingerbread or spice cake, it was even better after a day or so. Best of all, it's something Laura really made herself, and baking it made me feel closer to her.
LAURA'S GINGERBREAD
1 cup brown sugar blended with 1/2 cup lard or other shortening.
1 cup molasses mixed well with this.
2 tsp baking soda in 1 cup boiling water. (Be sure cup is full of water after foam is run off into cake mixture.)
Mix all well.
To 3 cups flour have added one teaspoon each of the following spices: ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves and 1/2 tsp salt. Sift all into cake mixture and mix well. Add lastly 2 well-beaten eggs. The mixture should be quite thin.
Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) for thirty minutes.
Raisins and, or, candied fruit may be added and a chocolate frosting adds to the goodness.
I still remember how a public librarian first introduced me to the Little House books when I was 9 or 10. They've been important in my life ever since. The very first thing I ever got published was an article about Laura's daughter, Rose, in Cobblestone Magazine, back in the late 80's. I still try to read everything Laura-related I can get my hands on. Now that I've enjoyed her gingerbread, I'm going to treat myself to two recent books I've not yet seen: Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life, by Pamela Smith Hill, which focuses on the writing/editorial relationship between Laura and Rose; and Tanya Lee Stone's DK biography that just came out in March.
Okay, I'm going to have another piece of gingerbread now.
*chest hairs sprouting*
♥ To read my post about Almanzo Wilder with a recipe for Apples 'n Onions, click here.
♥ Most of the newspaper columns Laura wrote for the Missouri Ruralist are online. I'm thinking she would be a great blogger -- sharing stuff about farm life, her family, and things in the news. I especially loved the column she did about the Food Products building at the San Francisco Exposition,"Magic in Plain Foods." She was fascinated by the modern machinery that makes food production so much easier, and the variety of foodstuffs available to the modern cook from around the world. She went around enjoying samples of rose cakes, rice cakes, and Scottish scones, and collecting recipes, including one for French croissants and Chinese Almond Cakes:
"We use raisins, flour, tea, breakfast food, and a score of other common things without a thought of the modern miracles that make it possible for us to have them."
**So, now, please tell me: which character do you want to be today? I'd love to know, and maybe try a recipe that your character liked. ♥
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Adorable!! And I must try out these new colored pencils as well. I'm having the same issues with my Prismacolors - its so sad! sniff!