Gingerbread Men & Women

My husband wanted to have a small Christmas celebration at his workplace during tea time, and he asked me if I could bake up some Gingerbread cookies for him to share. I wish he had told me earlier so that I could've baked them up with my previous batch of gingerbread cookies! 

Gingerbread Men

I'm pretty swamped with baking at this time of year, so it's hard to schedule time to bake up last minute goodies. I wish I can bake in my sleep, but I can't! And then, at 11:30pm, he asked if I could make 14 more Gingerbread women to give to the cook house staff! Argh! 

Gingerbread Women

It was another late night, but hooray, I finished the cookies. My husband plans to serve them with some wine too! I told him too bad we don't know where to get Glühwein (mulled wine) here. In Germany, gingerbread cookies (Lebkuchen in German) are traditionally made in larger heart shapes, and come attached to a string as they are meant to be worn around the neck. With messages like "I'm all yours" and "Take me" written on them, it's no wonder that dating youngsters like to give each other Lebkuchen to publicly proclaim their love for each other (and probably also to tell everyone that "this person is taken"!) My son used to always whine until we got him a cookie at every single Christmas market we went to!

 Big bite of cookie at the Neumarkt Christmas Market in Köln

Here's the cheeky little bugger enjoying his Lebkuchen, when we were still living in Germany! Most of the cookies were half the size of him! Ahhh, Christmas in Germany. Those were the days.

Father Christmas Lebkuchen at the Gleuler Christmas Market