The cookies my mother liked to make at Christmas weren’t decorated with glitter or frosting, but they contained the interesting flavors of cardamom, cinnamon and citron, the kind of uniqueness Mom valued. I wish I knew the origin of this recipe. I thought it came from one of her friends, but she made no attribution to a friend for the recipe in her cookbook. Cardamom is related to ginger and was often used in European recipes of old, and that is probably as close as I’ll get in solving the mystery.
The only cookies she made for the holidays, this recipe requires large mixing bowls, a sturdy mixer and enough time to bake a huge batch of cookies. Mom stored them in the coolest closet in a large earthenware crock that had been in our house long before she took over the kitchen.
Christmas Cookies
2 pounds (2 and 2/3 cups)light brown sugar
2 cups light corn syrup
Grated rind of 4 lemons
4 pounds (16 cups) flour
2 ½ pounds butter
1 pound chopped almonds
1 pound chopped citron
2 ounces potassium carbonate or potash (a leavening agent)
4 teaspoons ground cardamom
Half of a one-ounce can cinnamon
Heat the sugar, syrup and butter. Cool and combine with remaining ingredients. Refrigerate overnight. Roll dough to ¼-inch thickness. Cut with tree or star-shaped cookie cutters and place on greased cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees until brown.
Cool and store in air-tight containers in cool place.
Children love to help with food preparation, which can be a test of a mother’s patience any time of year. With the pressures of holiday time added, spilled sprinkles crunching on the kitchen floor and frosting smeared on counter tops can push parents beyond their patience limit. Yet this is how our memories are formed, the way we learn cherished traditions that we continue with our own children.
Mom let me help make gingerbread men, and I grew up to share the same experience with my own children. We used a beloved relative’s recipe for ginger cookies. Aunt Rickie was the sister of my mother’s fraternal grandmother. The young women came over from Germany with their parents in the 1860s, settling first in western Iowa, marrying men from the same area of Germany and moving on to homestead farmland in eastern Nebraska.
Great Grandmother Romberg died in her mid-30s, leaving six young children, four of whom lived to adulthood. Aunt Rickie and her husband were childless, so they took in and raised my grandfather, after his father remarried.
Not only was Aunt Rickie a surrogate grandmother to my mother, but she also demonstrated good home-style cooking. Her recipes turned up often at our family table and some are included in our mother’s cookbook. I probably developed my fondness for ginger because of this cookie dough that morphs into beguiling gingerbread figures.
Aunt Rickie’s Ginger Cookies
1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup sugar
1 cup sorghum or dark molasses
4 tablespoons water
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ginger
About 6 cups flour
Cream the butter and sugar; add sorghum and water. Sift the spices with 5 cups of flour. Add to creamed ingredients, adding more flour, if needed, to make soft dough. Refrigerate, dividing the dough into quarters for ease in handling.
Keep unused dough in the refrigerator as you roll a portion out to ¼-inch thickness on a floured surface. Cut with a gingerbread man or Santa Claus cookie cutter. Press raisins into dough for eyes and buttons.
Bake on greased cookie sheets at 350 degrees until browned around the edges. When cool, decorate with colored frosting as whim directs you.
Note: Mom made holes at the top of each cookie before baking them. After they were baked and decorated, she’d string narrow red ribbons through the holes, tying in bows to hang on our Christmas tree.
My son, David, Jr. still liked to make these cookies when he’d come home from studying industrial design in college. By then his decorative whims veered far from the traditional, producing decidedly progressive gingerbread men. The delight of cooking and celebrating holiday occasions comes from just such inventive playfulness.
Recipes are from the collection of Anna May Cullison.
