Gingerbread

In one of his less famed plays, William Shakespeare wrote, "And I had but one penny in the world, thou should'st have it to buy gingerbread." I am not sure I would spend my last coin on a gingerbread sweet, but it might not be a great mistake if I did. Gingerbread, the food most identified with our modern Christmas is something I and many others crave at Christmas time. Yes, I've already had a few gingerbread cookies. I like the thin ones with plenty of ginger inside.
First, some history of gingerbread foods that I researched. An early form of gingerbread can be traced to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians who used it for ceremonial purposes. I suppose the strong odor and the fact that ginger is a preservative in food made it appropriate for that. Supposedly, gingerbread made its earliest an appearance in Europe when 11th-century crusaders brought the spice back from the Middle East for the wealthy family cooks to experiment with. Thank goodness they did.

As ginger became more affordable to the common people, gingerbread sweets caught on. Early European recipes mostly consisted of ground almonds, stale bread crumbs, rose water, sugar and, naturally, ginger. Take out the rose water and add some eggs and it's close to what we use today in making gingerbread. When the cookies were baked bore the likeness of new kings, emperors and queens, or religious symbols. In a sense they told stories of hat was going on in the kingdoms. The finished cookie might be decorated with edible gold paint (for those who could afford it) or flat white icing to bring out the details in relief.

Later in England, the bread crumbs were replaced with flour and eggs were added to soften the gingerbread.. But many people today still use stale bread crumbs when making gingerbread. And finally, the Germans made gingerbread a passion and art. They also created the gingerbread house that we love today and tied it to Christmas. I always look in my local store for lebkuchen (the soft gingerbread cookie) from Germany and those thin, crispy pierniczki from Poland.

I know you might hate gingerbread. Some people don't even like the smell, but that is a minority point of view. My preference for ginger is in sweet foods, not entrees. I think it is because my earliest childhood memories of Christmas foods include some ginger based sweet. We tend to most like the foods we ate and enjoyed in childhood. My favorite Christmas sweets besides gingerbread include fruitcakes, peppermint candy canes and mints, decorated Christmas sugar cookies, buche du noel logs, Stollen cake, Panettone My least favorite Christmas sweets include eggnog, plum pudding, wassail, and mince pie. naturally, I ate most of the favorites often in childhood and had little contact then with the least favorites.

I hope this has stirred your Christmas sweet tooth a little and you'll either head for the nearest kitchen to make something sweet and Christmasy or buy an eat an already made Christmas sweet a favorite. Ho Ho Ho