Cake Talk

Rosie's Kentucky Derby-Like Pies!

What a difference a week makes. Just seven days ago I had no idea what a "Derby Pie" was. Today (right now to be exact) I have eight in the oven, with a promise of at least six more.

First, a disclaimer. The name "Derby Pie" is a registered trademark of Kern's Kitchen, which registered the name in 1968. The company uses the name in the form "DERBY-PIE®" in official literature and advertisements. According to Wikipedia, the Derby Pie was created by George Kern at the Melrose Inn of Prospect, Kentucky. It is a chocolate and walnut tart in a pastry crust, with Kentucky bourbon.

The Kentucky Derby is this weekend.

“The Run for the Roses” or “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports,” the Kentucky Derby is a 1.25 mile race for three-year-old thoroughbred horses. By-the-way, The phrase "Run for the Roses" was coined by New York sports columnist Bill Corum, who would later become president of Churchill Downs.

The race begins at 6:04 p.m. I watch it on television every year... besides the pie, here's what you gotta know:

• The Mint Julep -- is the official drink of the Kentucky Derby. It is an iced drink consisting of bourbon, mint, and a sweet syrup and is traditionally served in a commemorative Kentucky Derby glass. Early Times is the official Kentucky whiskey used to make Mint Juleps at the Kentucky Derby.
• Millionaire’s Row -- is the premium seating area that houses all of the rich and famous Kentucky Derby guests during the races.
• The Infield -- is the flat, grassy area inside of the track. The infield is best-known for hosting the largest Kentucky Derby party.
• The Triple Crown -- is a series of three races, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, that is run annually by a group of thoroughbred horses. Only 11 horses have won the Triple Crown, the most recent was Affirmed, in 1978. The most famous was Secretariat, in 1973.
• The Derby Hat Parade -- takes place inside of Churchill Downs and refers to the sea of stylish and elegant hats worn by women and men alike during the Kentucky Derby.
• My Old Kentucky Home -- the song played when the horse are led onto the field, has been played by University of Louisville Marching Band since 1936.

But we digress.

Back to the pies. Here is a recipe similar to the one we use, only smaller...

First the flour and the sugar.

Then the melted butter and chocolate chips, eggs and pecans (or walnuts, if you have them).

Then the good stuff. I suppose any Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey will do, but this is what I like.

 Mix it all up (you can use a smaller mixer...).

Pour it into the pie shells and bake.

Easy as pie. Should go great with vanilla ice cream, don't you think?

Half Swiss

My mother's family is Swiss, from the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino. With family names like Tomasini and DeMartini, there is no hiding the Italian heritage. My great grandfather changed his last name to DeMartin when he first arrived in the U.S. in 1892. He became an American citizen in 1898.

As children, my brothers, sister and I used to crawl onto grandma's lap while she told stories about her family's visit to Switzerland just before World War I, and how they got stranded there during the war.

Grandma arrived in Switzerland with her family late in 1913. She was barely 10 years old, and this was her first time traveling outside California. The family intended to stay in Switzerland about a year. Her youngest brother got sick and died of diptheria while they were there. Then her mother became pregnant, and the visit was prolonged.

At the time, American citizens were not required to hold passports for travel and no member of her family had a passport. But when the U.S. entered the war in 1917, passports became a requirement for entry into the United States.

Food was becoming scarce in Europe and even neutral Switzerland was not a safe place for a large American family. They desperately wanted to return home to California. My great-grandfather traveled to Zurich to apply for passports for himself, his wife, and their five children, submit two photos of each family member, and wait until everything could be verified and passports issued before they could travel home. He had no proof of his American citizenship, and his passport application relied on his sworn statements, and promise to use the documents immediately for the singular purpose of returning to the United States.

Waiting for passports, they split their time between Locarno, on the Lago Maggiore, and the tiny alpine village of Brontallo, high in the Valle Maggia, staying with relatives until December 1917. We pictured a life as described in the children's classic, Heidi, by Johanna Spyri.

Once they got passports, they immediately traveled by train to the Port of Bordeaux. Women and children were not allowed off the train during station stops, and every window in every compartment was permanently shuttered. She later learned from her father and brother that passing trains carried dead soldiers from the front.

The family spent a night in Bordeaux before boarding the steamship Rochambeau en route to New York. They ate dinner in a cafe near the harbor, their first restaurant meal in over a year. As her father got up to pay the bill for his table of seven, the cafe owner pointed to the American soldiers standing outside the restaurant and simply said "merci."

A short two years after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, and five years after the Titanic disaster; the large family feared separation should the ship be struck by a mine or torpedo (a very real possibility). Grandma, at 14, was the oldest of the children, and the only one privy to the pact made by her parents to stay together in their cabin should the bells sound and women and children be ordered onto lifeboats.

As the story goes, the ship zig-zagged the harbor to avoid mines before crossing the Atlantic. Every time she told this part of the story, she gave these details no less significance than the description of fresh apples and oranges in barrels on the deck. "You could just take them, as many as you wanted!" she always told us as if she were still in awe. Fresh fruit (in fact, food of any kind) had been scarce during their extended stay in the Swiss Alps.

On every visit to Switzerland, first with my grandmother in 1975, and several times since, we made the trek up the alps to Brontallo for a family meal that always included polenta. Similar to grits, polenta is slightly coarser in texture and once it’s cooked, it can be cooled, cut into shapes and grilled or fried. It is often cooked over an open fire in a cast iron or heavy copper pot.

When served to us as guests by our Swiss relatives, it is accompanied by a beef and tomato stew, but grandma remembered it plain for breakfast, or with a ragout made from mushrooms and herbs foraged in the woods.

Some people make polenta with milk or chicken stock as the liquid, but I always remember it with just water and salt. Here is a link to a traditional polenta recipe.

And it's OK that it sticks to the pot. I remember fighting with my cousins over the crispy bits you peel off the pot before you wash it.

Buon Apetit!

Titanic Tribute -- Cabin Biscuits and Currant Rolls

Like a lot of people, I'm fascinated by the Titanic. I am also overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available about the ship, her passengers, and the 100-year anniversary of her ill-fated maiden voyage.

I've seen most of the movies, read lots of books, spent hours upon hours on the Internet, and visited the traveling exhibit of Titanic Artifacts when it was in Cleveland many years ago. I also own a copy of the blueprint for the ship and a signed and numbered (3/450) lithograph by Stephen J. Card. OK, sorry, that's bragging.

My obsession interest in the Titanic comes honestly.

Half Slovenian

I t's my birthday on Saturday and I'm a bit nostalgic. Something made me pull this cookbook off the shelf. It belonged to my dad's mother, and was published the year I was born.

Grandma Cesar was born in Ljublijana, Slovenia in 1904. Her father was a master cabinet maker, and worked in Southampton, England around the time the Titanic was being outfitted. But that is a whole other story. She emigrated to the United States as a young woman in 1921. 

Grandma's English was difficult to understand. She had a very strong accent and was always reminding us of our Slovienian heritage. I tried to correct her once, saying we were Yugoslavian, as Slovenia (at the time) was part of Yugoslavia and not an independent country. She was a tall, slender woman, but she was very strong. She took me firmly by the shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. Very matter-of-factly and without a hint of a smile, SHE corrected ME. "You are NOT Yugoslavian, you are Slovenian." It was many years before I truly understood and appreciated the distinction.

Woman's Glory: The Kitchen is dedicated to the pioneer members of the Slovenian Women's Union of America. It was not her only cookbook, but it was certainly the one I remember the most. Not only did it contain recipes for almost every Slovenian dish I had ever eaten, but the pages were also filled with her own handwritten recipes, some in English, many not.

Grandma Cesar was the kind of person who made everything from scratch.

Plus, she grew her own vegetables and boiled (and ironed) her underwear. 

And if you knew what was good for you, you NEVER, EVER brought store-bought cookies or bread into her house.

As if all that was not enough, and like every true Slovenian woman on the planet, she made potica (ronounced "puh-teet-sa).

Potica is a rich yeast bread with a mixture of walnuts, cream and honey rolled in. It is traditionally baked in a round glazed terracota pan (similar to a bundt pan), or a long loaf pan, and served in slices to guests, and at holidays. If there were such a thing as a national food in Slovenia, it would be potica. 

The cookbook has an entire section on poticas, with four dough recipes. After grandma died, I remember my dad and aunts agonizing over the recipes in the book, and comparing them with their memories of how she made the dough. She never used a recipe that I remember and nobody had ever dared ask her which dough recipe to use.

So when the grandchildren were given the chance to pick one item from the house to remember grandma, I picked the cookbook.

And making potica reminds me that I am half Slovenian.

Grandma's recipe is in the Mary's Cakes cookbook, but here's the potica recipe , along with detailed instructions, from the Slovene National Society.

 

The Hunger Games Bread

I confess...I haven't seen the movie or read the book.

But I know about the bread. And that's because The Tuscaloosa News ran a story about foods inspired by the movie in the Wednesday food section just two days before the opening of The Hunger Games at the local theatre.

As it happened, the San Jose Mercury News asked readers to deconstruct the signature dishes of The Hunger Games a couple of months ago, and provide recipes for the distinctive breads, stews and other exemplars of Panem cuisine.

Some of the winning dishes appeared in the food section of The Tuscaloosa News, including Prim's Goat Cheese and Herb Bread.

According to the newspaper article, Antioch, California, English teacher Sherri Livingston and her Deer Valley High School English class collaborated on a bread inspired by Prim's goat cheese and the agricultural bounty of District 11. The result is a slightly sweet, oversized, crescent-shaped roll - stuffed with savory goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, pesto, nuts and seeds.

Without the slightest idea of who Prim was, or why her bread would contain goat cheese and herbs, the recipe seemed to stand on it's own.

I knew we might be on to something when I announced my intentions to the staff at the bakery and Maury practically danced with glee.

Alrighty then.

When Life Hands You Lemons...

Mom and dad have a lemon tree in their backyard. As fate would have it, I visit once a year, in January when the lemons are ripe.

And, there are only so many lemons my parents can use or give away. Especially in California, where every other house has a similar tree.

So in the suitcase they go.

Future lemon squares at Mary's Cakes and Pastries!

They are pretty easy to make, you just need fresh lemons. Don't even THINK about using bottled lemon juice.

I like them when they are heavy on the lemon custard and light on the crust. Tart and sweet at the same time. Makes them almost seem healthy. Here's a closer look.

Want the recipe? No mixer required, we make this ENTIRELY by hand in the shop so there is no fighting over Rosie (the new 60-quart Hobart mixer we won in the Get Back To Scratch contest last summer). The recipe is also in our cookbook.

You can use the crust recipe below or press unbaked shortbread dough into the bottom of the pan. Shortbread dough will make the crust firmer and stronger.

Mary's Lemon Squares

For the crust:

12 oz. butter or margarine (3 sticks)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3 cups all purpose flour

For the filling:

4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (with zest from lemons)

For the crust: Cut the margarine into pieces. Add the margarine (or butter), brown sugar and flour to a large mixing bowl and mix with a fork, pastry cutter, or your hands until incorporated and the margarine or butter is in pea sized pieces. Press into a half sheet (12" x 18") pan. Do NOT line the pan. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until set. Crust will be slightly soft. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 10-15 minutes before pouring the filling over the crust. Lower heat in the oven to 325.

For the filling: While crust is cooking, combine eggs and sugar in a bowl and whip with a hand whisk. Then add flour, lemon juice and zest. Mix with whip until combined and the mixture is lump-free.  Pour lemon mixture over cooled crust and return to oven. Bake at 325  for 20-25 minutes or until set. Do not brown or create a hard crust on top.

When totally cooled, dust with confectiiners' sugar and cut into squares. Makes 48 2-inch squares (or more if you cut them smaller).

 

Rosie's Cinnamon Raisin Nut Bread

I've been waiting months to make this. Ever since the Retail Bakers Association conference last summer where I heard about cinnamon chips as a way to add a burst of cinnamon flavor to breads and other baked goods.

At lunch, a guy started talking about his hummingbird cake recipe, and how he used cinnamon chips instead of ground cinnamon for pockets of concentrated cinnamon flavor.

When someone asked him where he got them, he replied "Wal-Mart."

And that's where it started.

We've made cinnamon bread in the past, but the cinnamon was either mixed into the dough (and the flavor was somewhat lost in the yeast and flour) or rolled in (which requires way too much effort to mix the cinnamon, sugar and butter and have a loaf folks can afford). We also make an outstanding cinnamon roll (which I wouldn't dare mess with). The cinnamon chips sounded like a great alternative.

And I figured it would be easy.

Our local Wal-Mart had semi-sweet chips, milk chocolate chips, peanutbutter chips, white chips and toffee chips. But no cinnamon chips. Publix? No. Target? No. Winn Dixie? No. Brunos? No. Food World? No. I was getting tired.

I even called my suppliers, but they had never heard of them.

Off to the Internet, and I found Hershey's.

Ok, I know Hershey's is not REAL chocolate. And their cinnamon chips are probably not real cinnamon. But the bakery buys refined sugar, bleached flour, shortening, margarine, corn syrup and food colors galore. I am hardly going to get all snobby about cinnamon chips.

In our defense, we DO use lots of real butter, real cream and real chocolate.

Back to the supplier, who said they would try to order them. That was in August.

They arrived Tuesday, December 6.

And today I dusted off the recipe for cinnamon nut bread, doubling it for Rosie, our new gigantic 60-quart mixer.

Got all the ingredients mixed, adding the cinnamon chips, nuts and raisins last.

The dough was lovely and soft to work with. There is a certain feel to good dough and I get all excited when I know it's just right.

We sprinkled a little sugar on the tops of the loaves and we all stared at the oven for the last few minutes of baking. We even had customers in the shop who waited for the bread to be done so they could take some warm loaves home.

It looked a little plain right out of the oven, and I could't resist drizzling some glaze over the top.

Simply yummy comfort food.

And it will make the perfect toast tomorrow morning.

Here's the recipe (you will have to do your own math if you don't want to make 30 loaves).

 

Rosie's Cinnamon Nut Raisin Bread

• 14 lbs. bread flour
• 5 quarts water
• 6 oz. instant yeast
• 2 lbs. sugar
• 1/2 cup salt
• 5 lbs. cinnamon chips
• 2 lbs. pecans
• 2 lbs. raisins

Combine first five ingredients in mixer. Using dough hook, mix 8-9 minutes. Watch dough and add additional flour or water if needed within the first three minutes. Add cinnamon chips, pecans and raisins at end and mix until incorporated.

Oil dough and transfer to large bowl. Bulk proof at room temperature until doubled. Divide into 1-pound loaves and place in oiled loaf pans. Proof again until doubled. Brush tops with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 350oF until done, approximately 35-40 minutes.

Drizzle with sugar glaze when cool.

Six of Mary's Favorite Named Pastries

Some day I may bore you with stories about all my favorite famous named pastries, but here are six of the more interesting ones.

1. In France, many pastries are named after people. However, the Napoleon or (called mille feuilles in France or ) may come from napolitain, the French adjective for the Italian city of Naples.

A Frenchmille-feuille consists of three layers of puff pastry and two layers of crème pâtissière. The top is glazed with icing, in alternating white (icing) and brown (chocolate) strips, and then combed. In France a Napoléon is specific type of mille-feuille filled with almond flavoured paste.

In Italy, the pastry is called  mille foglie which mean "a thousand leaves" and is believed to have originated in Naples.

There are almost as many claims to origin as there are countries. The Danes believe a Danish royal pastry chef invented the dessert in the 1800s for a state visit between the Emperor Napoleon and the King of Denmark, in Copenhagen. In Sweden and Finland, the Napoleonbakelse (Napoleon pastry) is a mille-feuille filled with whipped cream, custard, and jam. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to claims.

2. The Savarin is named after Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), a 16th century gastronome.  Similar to the Baba au Rhum -- a ring shaped yeast cake, flavored with fruit and soaked in rum syrup-- without fruit, and soaked in kirsch syrup.

As an aside, the baba is believed to be a version of a kugelhopf, which was invented in Lemberg in the 1600s. The baba was brought to Paris, France by King Stanislas Leszczynska, the deposed king of Poland and the father-in-law of King Louis XV (1710–1774) of France when he was exiled to Lorraine. According to legend, he found the customary kouglhopf too dry for his liking and dipped the bread in rum. He was so delighted that he named the cake after one of the heroes of his favorite book, Ali Baba from A Thousand and One Nights. Later, his chef refined the sweet bread by using brioche dough and adding raisins to the recipe. The dish was then simply called “baba.

3. The Madeline is a small shell shaped sponge cake flavored with nuts or citrus. Madeleines are associated with the French town of Commercy, whose bakers were said to have once, long ago, paid a "very large sum" for the recipe and sold the little cakes packed in oval boxes as a specialty in the area. Commercy once had a convent dedicated to St. Mary Magdelen. According to the legend, the nuns, at a time when the convents and monasteries of France were abolished during the French Revolution, sold their recipe to the bakers. Madelines were made famous in the 20th century by Marcel Proust in his book, À la recherche du temps perdu, Volume 1, Swann's Way...

She sent for one of those squat plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell … I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my senses...

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray … when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane …. and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea.

4. The Croissant, often associated with France, originated in Austria. Remember the Ottoman Empire? Well, the bakers of Vienna are credited with defending the city AND inventing the croissant during the seige of 1683.

The story goes... after several months of trying to starve the city into submission, the Ottoman Turks attempted to tunnel underneath the walls of the city. Fortunately for Vienna, some bakers hard at work in the middle of the night heard the sounds of the Turks digging and alerted the city's defenders. This advance warning gave the defenders enough time to do something about the tunnel before it was completed. Soon, King John III of Poland arrived at the head of an army that defeated the Turks and forced them to retreat.

To celebrate, bakers in Vienna made a pastry in the shape of the crescents they had seen on the battle flags of the enemy, calling it a kippfel (the german word for crescent). Many years later, Marie Antoinette, a 15 year old Austrian Princess, married King Louis XVI of France. To honor their new queen, the bakers in Paris made kippfels (in French, croissants). 

5. Closer to home, the first reference to the Hummingbird Cake (with bananas, pineapple, pecans and cinnamon) is credited to Southern Living Magazine in 1978.

The name comes, perhaps, from the fact that hummingbirds are drawn to sweet sources -- the cake is definitely sweet. Like many named pastries  however, there is more than one theory about the origin of the name.

• The cake is so good you "hum" with delight.
• People hover around it like hummingbirds hover around nectar.
• The cake is sweet enough to attract hummingbirds.
• The national bird of Jamaica is the hummingbird, and the cake's main ingredients (bananas and pineapple) are tropical.

Whatever the theory, the recipe's first appearance was in an article titled "Making the Most of Bananas." The recipe is, today, the most requested recipe in Southern Living Magazine History. It is traditionally covered in cream cheese icing and pecans. 

6. The Lane Cake is a white sponge cake made with egg whites and consists of four layers that are filled with a mixture of the egg yolks, butter, sugar, raisins, and whiskey. The cake is frosted with a boiled, fluffy white confection of water, sugar, and whipped egg whites.

Emma Rylander Lane (from Clayton, Alabama) first printed the recipe in a self-published cookbook (Some Good Things to Eat) in 1898.

According to chef and culinary scholar Neil Ravenna, Lane first brought her cake recipe to public attention at a county fair in Columbus, Georgia, when she entered her cake in a baking competition there and took first prize. She originally named the cake the Prize cake, but an acquaintance convinced her to lend her own name to the dessert.

If you like this kind of stuff, go back and read some of my past posts with references to named pastries...

• The Linzertorte
• Flan
• Peach Melba
• Pain au Chocolat
• Bundt Cake
• Rumpledoodles
• Divinity
• Creme Brulee
• King Cakes
• The Buche de Noel
• Fruitcake
• Bon Bons
• Apple Tarts

The Linzertorte

The Linzertorte or Linzer Tart is our new favorite pastry at the bakery. And we just love watching people's expressions as they taste it for the first time. Absolute bliss.

A traditional Christmas pastry in Europe, it originated in Linz, Austria. The pastry is made from a nut and spice dough, filled with jam and topped with a lattice crust.

It's one of those fussy *named* pastries you learn about in culinary school, along with the Sachertorte, the Napoleon and the Madeleine.

The Linzertorte is also one of the oldest known tarts with a recipe, discovered in an Austrian abbey in 1653.  An Austrian immigrant who worked as a baker is recognized for introducing it to America in the 1850's.

The traditional recipe calls for hazelnut flour and black currant jam, ingredients that are expensive and hard to come by in America. Most American recipes call for almond flour and raspberry jam instead.

We use almond paste instead of almond flour, which results in a very soft dough. Too soft to roll with a rolling pin, we spread the bottom layer with a spatula, and pipe the lattice with a pastry bag.

Here is the recipe from our Cookbook.

Mary's Cakes Linzer Bars

• 1 lb. butter, softened
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup almond flour (or almond paste)
• 3 cups a.p. flour
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 lb. raspberry jam
• confectioners sugar
• sliced almonds (optional)

Place butter and sugar in bowl of electric mixer fitted with a paddle atttachment. Cream until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients together. Beat dry ingredients into butter mxture to blend thoroughly.

Divide the dough into thirds. Reserve one-third for the lattice top. Press remaining dough into the bottom of a 12" x 18" (half sheet) pan. Spread jam evenly onto dough in bottom of pan.

Roll out remaining dough for lattice top and cut into 1/2-inch strips. Arrange on jam in a criss-cross fashion, re-rolling dough as needed to make sufficient strips and piecing strips as necessary. (If you used almond paste instead of almond flour, your dough should be soft enough to pipe the lattice using a large plain tip). Sprinkle with sliced almonds (optional).

Bake at 350^o for about 40 minutes or until  nicely browned. Cool, then dust with confectioners sugar and cut into 2-inch squares. Makes 48 squares.

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A little bit of trivia... The third largest in Austria, Linz is a city of about 200,000, just 30 kilometers south of the Czech border, about halfway between Salzburg and Vienna. It sits on both sides of the Danube River. Known for steel and chemical production, it is also a center for music and art. Former resident and composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) is to Linz what Mozart is to Salzburg. Fred Astaire's father was born there. Johannes Kepler (the astronomer) and Adolf Hitler (most infamous resident)  lived there. It's almost the home of PEZ candy (in Traun, about 15 minutes away). And that's about all you need to know about Linz besides the cake.

Gingerbread Persons

 

Rosie helped make this year's gingerbread persons. All 220 of them.

Of course, without Suzanne, they'd be plain or ordinary.

And that's not the kind of place that Mary's Cakes is. Neither plain nor ordinary.

So every year, about this time, we mix up a batch of gingerbread cookie dough and roll out the naked bodies.

Then we mix up a really big batch of royal icing, and Suzanne gets to work clothing each one in his or her unique costume.

Each one is different, but there are themes.

There are always Bama and Auburn fans (Suzanne went to BOTH UA and AU). Party persons with tacky Christmas sweaters and pinstripes and bow ties. Glamorous gals in swimsuits and evening gowns. Funky folks in all types of sportswear and Hawaiian shirts.

And of course there are brides in off-the shoulder dresses and veils, holding bouquets.

She adds incredible details like Pearls. And flip flops. And wristwatches. And hats. You never know what her mind will come up with next.

This year there is even a pirate with an eye patch and sword, a ship's mate with a striped shirt, and a mermaid.

Plus Santa (with a big "S" on his belt buckle).

When the icing dries, we attach a ribbon for hanging on the tree (better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it...) and package each person in a protective celophane bag tied with another ribbon.

They are suitable for hanging on the tree, but also deliciously edible.

Come on down and pick out your favorite. They'll be ready and hanging from our tree at Dickens Downtown.

Or make your own. Here's the smaller version of Rosie's Recipe...

GINGERBREAD PERSONS

Shortening	1 c.
Granulated Sugar	1 c.
Dark Molasses	1 c.
Cold Water	1/4 c.
All Purpose flour	6 c.
Ground Ginger	2 tsp.
Ground Cinnamon	2 tsp.
Salt	1 tsp.

Cream shortening, sugar and molasses. Add cold water and mix thoroughly. Add Dry ingredients and mix to incorporate.

Roll out and bake at 350F until done, about 10 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen.

Decorate with royal icing.

Note: Dough rolls and cuts better if slightly chilled. Pierce head  with straw or decorating tip before baking if you plan to add a ribbon to tie on the tree.