Since we wouldn't be able to participate in the annual kickoff weekend, I've been trying to recreate some of the traditions. I've been looking around for gingerbread houses. They are really difficult to find! Trying to recreate traditions that are totally foreign to Japan can be very challenging. During my quest, I found one kit that was various colored doughs that you baked and assembled a really complicated house. I quickly decided it was too much for a 4 year old and kept shopping. At the same store, they had a gingerbread man cookie kit. It came with a dough mix, cookie cutter, and 2 chocolate pens for decorating. Perfect! I grabbed the box and paid ¥680 for it ($6). I'd keep looking for the house and do this in the meantime.
At home, I had my husband read the direction to me as I made the dough. I weighed out the 90 grams of butter. I put it in my food processor with the beater attachment and let it whip away. I then added 70 grams of sugar and continued to let the food processor do the work. After it was fully incorporated, I weighed out 20 grams of egg (which is less than a really small egg) and put in in the butter and sugar mixture. At that time it was ready for the flour mixture that came in the box. I put them both in a bowl and mixed and mixed and mixed. Gingerbread is a really dry dough and takes a lot to get all the flour incorporated. My husband commented that I could add up to 1 tsp ground ginger to the dough. Since my husband isn't a huge gingerbread fan, I decided I didn't need to intensify the flavor with more ginger.
After the dough was fully mixed, I formed the dough into a ball and put it in the fridge for half an hour. Once it was fully rested and firmed up, I laid it on the counter to roll out and cut out the men. When I got this far, I suddenly realized I didn't have a rolling pin. Hmmm... What would Julia Child do? I decided she would grab a wine bottle and go for it. So that is just what I did. I quickly had my dough rolled out and my son was cutting out little men to his heart's delight. We carefully transferred them to a baking sheet and baked them using the water oven feature on my little oven. They were done after 9 minutes, even though the recipe said 12-15 minutes. Japanese cookies are typically hard and crunchy. I prefer a bit of softness to my cookies - or as the Japanese advertisers like to say "American style."
We let the cookies cool overnight, as it was a good stopping point and my son always does better with creative activities in the morning. There was a bit of a learning curve to the chocolate pens. You have to warm them up in a mug of hot water and then keep them warm so the chocolate doesn't harden in the tips. My son started with decorating each cookie to be a daddy or mommy or grandma, but soon was more interested in getting as much chocolate as possible on each cookie. As much as I didn't want him to make a huge mess, I just kept reminding myself that they are just cookies and having fun was much more important than fretting about an easily cleaned mess.
When it came time to eat the cookies, my husband and I looked at each other with a smile. There wasn't any ginger in the cookies at all. They were actually Chocolate Men. As a person that loves gingerbread, I was sorely disappointed. But, my husband was thrilled to not have too many spices in his cookies, or more accurately, no spices whatsoever.
I'm glad I went through the effort for my son. He really enjoyed himself. But I will still keep looking for that magical house to decorate. And I'll also keep an eye out for real gingerbread cookies. They've got to have them around here somewhere!
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