Trivia Advent Calendar

[Eva Elisabeth]

(12-02-2014 03:05 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  My idea was that a cake would be something suitable for an Advent calendar...

Speaking of cake, I'm curious again - what Xmas baking traditions do you have or remember? Did or do you have a favorite kind of cookies or cake? Please share!

I loved to "create" cutout cookies and gingerbread houses. Now I enjoy to marvel at the latter. Our local newspaper presents a gingerbread house contest for kids every year and attacts the pedestrians in the city center by displaying the ca.300 results in their windows - traditional "Hänsel and Gretel" houses as well as such that match the annual Xmas play at the opera, Alice in Wonderland this year (and all little bakers in any case get tickets). Love the chesire cat...
       
Finally, the gingerbread houses reminded me of that, according to Carl Sandburg, A. Lincoln loved gingerbread cookies. This is a story he told in his in his debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858:

“When we lived in Indiana, once in a while my mother used to get some sorghum and ginger and make some gingerbread. It wasn’t often and it was our biggest treat. One day I smelled the gingerbread and came into the house to get my share while it was still hot. My mother had baked me three gingerbread men. I took them out under a hickory tree to eat them.

There was a family near us poorer than we were and their boy came along as I sat down. ‘Abe,’ he said, ‘gimme a man.’ I gave him one. He crammed it into his mouth in two bites and looked at me while I was biting the legs off my first one. ‘Abe, gimme that other’n.’ I wanted it myself, but I gave it to him and as it followed the first, I said to him, ‘You seem to like gingerbread.’ ‘Abe,’ he said, ‘I don’t s’pose anybody on earth likes gingerbread better’n I do — and gets less’n I do...’”

So, now what about a gingerbread White House, Lincoln Home or log cabin? And what about your confectionaries and stories?