Gingerbread houses

Gingerbread is one of the most varied recipes you can find for baked desserts. Centuries old, it seems like everyone's family has passed down a different variety of gingerbread, from gingerbread sweetened with molasses, spiced with currants and colored with food coloring. Shaped like men, women, children, even pigs! Whatever the mixture of cinnamon, sugar, allspice and good old family baking secrets, gingerbread is a delicious and time-honored tradition that evokes a cozy and welcoming feeling, perfect for the holidays.

Ginger, grown in tropical Asia since before recorded history, was one of the most commonly traded spices during the 13th and 14th centuries. It was a coveted item, and thought to be a remedy for a number of infirmities. It was found to have preservative qualities when added to baked goods, and by the eleventh century, different cultures across Europe had integrated it into cooking and baking all sorts of goodies. Gingerbread dishes were greatly varied depending on the region, from soft spiced cakes to warm square bread-like portions, to flat cakes. Most of the time, across the regions, the gingerbread was cut or stamped out into molds of different shapes (men, women, animals, etc), decorated, and dusted with powdered sugar to accentuate the mold. Round simplified pieces were called 'snaps', hence the ginger snap.

Gingerbread was a staple of the fairs of the Medeival times and on, especially in Germany, home of the most flat ginger cakes. The delicacy there was the Nuremberg Lebkuchen, crafted especially by the master Lebkuchler bakers, and was offered at special occasions, like Christkindlmarkt, held - you guessed it - in December.

In the nineteenth century, the brothers Grimm made popular the practice German bakers had of making and selling lebkuchen houses, decorated with colorful candy, and the German tale of Hansel and Gretel, two children who get lost in the woods and find a house made of bread and candy. This story, along with the recipes of the delicious gingerbread treats, grew in importance and popularity as each family and region's culture grew stronger. With each passing generation, a new sense of pride was reborn in the history of this tradition, and once the emigration to America started, the tradition crossed the Atlantic to North America....
........and we've been making gingerbread houses ever since!