Mmmmolasses Crinkles!

One of our all time favorite cookie recipes is from my first cook book, Betty Crocker’s New Boys and Girls Cookbook.  A gift from my beloved Aunt Janet, when I was 9 or 10,  this cookbook took me through college and beyond until it was joined by Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, a wedding gift from my bff’s mother. I still treasure both and they look it.  (See the binding?)

Grace is working on her American Heritage Girl Cooking Badge, and is also on the lookout for opportunities to meet her Service Hour goal, so happily agreed to work on two goals in one by making cookies for a Bake Sale at our church, Ghent UMC, to benefit the Vacation Bible School. 

What to bake? Our other seasonal fave, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip was already claimed.  Having been off and on South Beach for several years, we don’t do a tremendous amount of baking (not the right sort of carbs); and I’ve never been one to spend hours on fancy Christmas cookies that look better than they taste!  If we’re going to eat cookies, they at least need to be worth falling off the wagon.  I pulled out the cookbook and showed her  the recipe for Molasses Crinkles and promised her that despite the lack of chocolate and holiday cookie bling they would taste great! 

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The recipe is easy!  We increase the spices because we love them!  I only use King Arthur whole wheat flour products – we used King Arthur White Wheat for our cookies, and topped them with Turbinado sugar instead of granulated because I love the warmth of the golden crystals against the brown spicy cookie.  Here is a link:  Betty Crocker’s Molasses Crinkles.   The recipe makes 4 dozen cookies.  We doubled the recipe, planning to donate 4 dozen of the best looking ones to church and keep some to nibble a few for a day, and then freeze for Christmas Dinner.  By the time we packaged up the cookies for the sale, I was lucky to freeze one dozen!   My hungry husband and teenage son had devoured 3 dozen cookies!  (I didn’t eat any -wink, wink!) When I complained about so few being left, Grace said, “No problem Mom! I’ll bake you some more. They were awesome!”

So we painted a dead fish…

Yep! It’s an art form!

In the island nation of Japan, fishing is both a primary industry and a pastime.  According to the writers of the Heart and Hands Ancient Far East Kit teacher’s guide, Japanese fishing competitions eventually ceased requiring competitors to show “the big fish,” but allowed for prints of it!  The technique is actually called Gyotaku.  “Gyo”  for fish, and “taku” for rubbing.  A quick websearch (wish I had done this before we started) yielded some lovely examples!

We purchased the kit upon the exuberant recommendation of several moms on the Sonlight forum who have taught the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer curriculum before.  The first two activities in the kit relate to Japan.  There are two small wooden doll figures to be painted to commemorate Girl’s day and Boy’s day in Japan, and…the fish.  For some reason, I kept putting off the fish print.  Not sure why…but I suspect because it involved a dead and slightly odiferous fish…

We weren’t entirely pleased with our fish prints.  For one thing our fish’s dorsal fin was pressed down, and the tail was somewhat compressed so neither of them show up very well in the prints.  A fresh fish would likely yield a nicer print!   (Let me know if this is your experience!)  The paint mixing instuctions yielded a very watery paint mixture, so we suspect something went wrong there.  We also weren’t sure which side of the rice paper to use to press against the poor painted fellow.  The funky fish fragrance hung around for a while; even the print itself exuded a whiff of the wharf.  However, after spending a few weeks pressed in my hefty Ancient Civilizations tome, the paper smells like, well, paper.

In the end, we decided that everyone should paint a dead fish at least once!

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Japan falls in Weeks 7 and 8 of the Sonlight Eastern Hemisphere Core Curriculum.  I’m just a little late in posting!