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["Preparation Time: 30 min", "Chilling Time: Overnight", "Baking Time: 10minutes", "1.", "Cream shortening and sugar in mixing bowl, beat in Large eggs, one at a time.", "Mix water and baking soda in small bowl till dissolved.", "Add in baking soda mix and sorghum to butter mix.", "Sift 5 1/2 c. of the flour, the spices and salt together.", "Blend into dough.", "Divide dough into 4 balls.", "Wrap in plastic wrap.", "Flatten and chill overnight.", "2.", "Heat oven to 350 degrees.", "Roll 1 portion of dough out at a time on lightly floured surface.", "Cut into desired shapes.", "Bake on a greased cookie sheet till puffed, 10 to 12 min.", "Don't overbake.", "3.", "When cold, decorate with buttercream frosting and/or possibly candies as desired.", "Sorghum gives these cookies a special flavor, but molasses can be used as a substitute.", "gingerbread men left Bohemia in 1872 and immigrated to the United States.", "Smith's great-grandmother, ""Babicka"" Novak, lived in a small Czech-American town in South Dakota where Smith's mother grew up in the 1920s.", "At Christmas time, her great-grandma would give her neighbors Old World gingerbread men, reindeer and rocking horses.", """One year when Great-grandma delivered the cookies, she brought along her teenaged grandson, who was visiting from a small ethnic Czech community in Nebraska,"" Smith wrote.", """Introductions made which day over the watchful eyes of the gingerbread men eventually lead to wedding bells for my parents a decade later.", "Great-grandma Novak probably had planned this all along!"""]
