Instructions: Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Chilling Time: Overnight

Baking Time: 10
minutes

1. Cream shortening and sugar in mixing bowl, beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix water and baking soda in small bowl until dissolved. Add baking soda mixture and sorghum to butter mixture. Sift 5 1/2 cups of the flour, the spices and salt together. Blend into dough. Divide dough into 4 balls. Wrap in plastic wrap. Flatten and refrigerate 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 until puffed, 10 to 12 minutes. Do not overbake.

3. When cool, decorate with buttercream frosting and/or 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. Smiths great-grandmother, "Babicka" Novak, lived in a small Czech-American town in South Dakota where Smiths 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 that 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!"

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