Adventures in Gingerbread

My Florida church has their annual gingerbread decorating today.  My pastor has been baking all week, and today people will bring tubs and tubes of icing and other decorations for the festive, post-worship event.  

Note for future project:  why do we make these things post-worship?  Could we create a liturgy that uses gingerbread people?  I bet that we could.  Hmmm.

I knew the event was coming, and I wanted a gingerbread person of my own, not to decorate, but to eat.  I prefer my gingerbread unadorned.  I saw a decorating kit in The Fresh Market:  $12 for 6 gingerbread people and decorations.  I thought that was a bit pricy, and I know how those cookies would taste.  I kept walking.

I was at an upscale bakery later, and they had gingerbread people, mostly unadorned except for some white icing piped around the edges.  I was prepared to buy several, until I asked the price.  "Five dollars," the nice lady said.

Before I could stop myself, I said, "Never mind.  I have molasses at home."  I smiled, so that it might have come across as less rude.

I did not point out that the larger cookies with chocolate chips were half that price.  Maybe molasses is just that expensive.  It was last year, when I decided not to pay $10 for a jar of molasses--not artisanal molasses, just the kind of jar that once cost two or three dollars.  This year, I found that jar for $3.98 and bought it.

Friday afternoon, I made gingerbread people, and I have since been eating gingerbread people.  One of the reasons I thought about paying at the bakery is so that I wouldn't eat 4 dozen gingerbread people mostly by myself.

This year's batch is harder than I would like--you could build a house out of this gingerbread.  It's so hard to get gingerbread right:  hard enough to decorate, but with a soft interior.  I didn't use my family recipe which is in a box somewhere.  That recipe calls for cooking the molasses and the butter together and letting it cool before proceeding.

Let me stop eating gingerbread people and take one last look at my sermon.  Soon it will be time to head across the mountain to Bristol, Tennessee to Faith Lutheran.  There were thunderstorms last night, but at least no snow or ice yet.