Of This and Other Worlds

When my son came home from Junior Kindergarten excitedly waving a recipe for making gingerbread men, I confess my heart sank a little. I've tasted many such cookies, and even though they might look cute on the outside, the gingerbread was always so dry and bland that I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. Besides, who wants to spend all that time messing around with decorations and icing? Not me.

However, this one just said "decorate with raisins", so I thought hm, maybe it doesn't need icing and I should give it a try. And I did manage to find a gingerbread man-shaped plastic mould (it wasn't even a proper cutter -- I got it out of a Rice Krispies box) in my cupboard, so I worked up my courage, followed the recipe, and...

Oh.

Oh my.

You definitely don't need icing for these (in fact the mere idea wounds my soul). You don't need fancy decorations, either. I raided my cupboard for currants, raisins and dried marachino cherries, and a few seconds with a knife gave me all the eyes, buttons and smiles a gingerbread man could need.

And they aren't hard, or bland. They are spicy and chewy and delicious, and the only reason I am not eating the head off my third or fourth cookie right now is because I am heroically restraining myself.

( Recipe below )

Enjoy! And don't tell me you iced them or I will come after you with a wiffle bat, you philistine.

From this interview with an author I'd never heard of until five minutes ago:

Something Rotten is Shakespeare's "Hamlet" rewritten as a contemporary young adult murder mystery set in fictional Denmark, Tennessee, with the minor character of Horatio recast as a wry, sarcastic, seventeen-year-old detective.

SOLD. I tell you. Right there, no further questions asked. Now where did I put my wallet?

I WANT ONE OF THESE RIGHT NOW.

WHY OH WHY AM I SO LOUSY AT KNITTING?!?!?!