- Grant wasn't the only one who had an affection for gingerbread. Abraham Lincoln loved it too. Although he was particularly fond of ginger crackers. Haven't had a ginger cracker? I bet you have. The are gingerbread men ginger cookies, anything that was crisp that was a cracker. Something that the British still prefer to call their cookies. So what I have here again is molasses, but in this case the original recipe from the 1830s and 40s calls for Indian molasses, Western Indie molasses. So sorghum really well, you could use it but the recipe preferred West Indies molasses. So the molasses is stirred together with butter. You could use lard if you wanted, if you didn't have enough butter along with a little bit of brown sugar to sweeten it just a little bit more. Then add in a couple of eggs. Brown eggs. We always thought they tasted better. But brown the real right eggs you weren't gonna see 150, 200 years ago. It depends on what the chicken eat and the color of the shell along with the breed of the chicken, but just good fresh farm eggs. Mix that together. Go ahead add a little bit of flour along with a little bit of pearl ash, that's baking soda. Make it rise just a little bit. Then we're gonna add in our spices ground ginger, cinnamon and clove. Which by the way these spices were used in a lot of different applications meat, side dishes, just not for cake and sweets. Stir that. To a nice stiff dough 'cause remember we're gonna be rolling this out and cutting it into gingerbread man shapes. At this point, just continue mixing Lightly knead it. Add a little more flour until it gets stiff. I'm gonna pull it out on to a work surface. Take half of it. With just half of it right now. You can see it's a little soft. So I want it just a little stiffer just so it can cut a little bit easier. Flour your rolling pin, then roll it out. Then you can begin to cut your gingerbread man. Abe Lincoln had a story that when he was a young man he was coming home and he could smell the gingerbread baking. He ran into this mother's house and she gave him three gingerbread men to take out and eat under the tree. And he wrote and told the story on how he sat under that tree and along came a neighbor boy who he said was from a family that was even more poor than he was. And the young man said, "Abe, I want one of those men." So he gave him one 'cause Abe was a good hearted soul. And he gobbled it down before he could even have one of the legs bitten off one of his gingerbread men. So he gave him another one of those gingerbread men so it only left him with the one he was eating. Now the other guy had two. And he asked his friend he said, "You must really like gingerbread." Which his friend said, "I don't think that anybody likes gingerbread anymore than I do and gets lest of it." So anyway, you can kind of see how we're doing here. Transfer this to a baking sheet. Bake in a moderate oven or kind of a quick fire, not a hot fire but quick until it's nice and crisp and brown. And chances are you might have a friend just like Abe that says, "Can I have one of them gingerbread men?"