The Kondis boasts an amazing assemblage of gingerbread creatures—long-whiskered cats, birds, wolves, and reindeer by the dozens. There you will find the world's most endearing of hearts, the gingerbread kind! Big and little hearts are trimmed in loops and swirls of icing as if deep-ridged by snow. The price for a heart, three inches tall, is 5 cents and so on by measure, up to ＄1.
“Deck the halls with boughs of holly—Fa, la, la, la, la, la, “T'is the season to be jolly—” So you are having a holiday tea? Then order the midget turnovers filled with mincemeat, baited with brandy. These plump dumpling-like morsels, the size of half dollars, each one but two bites, are made by Mammy's Pantry, 122 Montague Street, Brooklyn, made from now into March. Mincemeat is shipped in from kitchen in Louisville, Kentucky, a barrel at a time; some two a thousand pounds in a winter. About a thousand pounds go into pies, the remainder is dipped, spoonful by spoonful, to the wee pastry rings. These are folded, their edges fork-crimped, the tops pricked so that the steam can escape. The dumplings come from the oven the brown of autumn oak leaves.
Under an experimental tongue, they give a flavor which has indeed a heaven-sent affinity for the brandy in which the fruit of the filling is steeped. These fruity little tarts are good, not only for tea but as a dinner dessert when singing with heat. Ten minutes in a hot oven just before serving turns the trick.
“He came into the world in the middle of a thicket”—the fawn Bambi. “His little red coat bore fine white spots and in his vague baby face there was still a deep sleepy expression.”
Christmas-tree Bambi is cut out of gingerbread. His coat baked a red brown and the fine white spots are frosting, added by an artist's hand. The baby face has the innocent wide-eyed look of a Bambi fresh from the forest.
The fawn grows older. He lifts his hoofs elegantly. He learns to leap and jump and all in gingerbread. The artist has caught the “young prince” in one of those wild happy dashes through the blossoming meadow.
Of course friend hare is there with his “long spoon-like ears hanging down limply as though they had suddenly grown weak.” Gingerbread hare has good-natured features and one big round eye that sees everything.
This trio are but three of a vast company of gingerbread people from story-book land on sale for the holidays at the Farm and Garden Shop, 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Other figures are friendly donkey who wears a wreath of frosting flowers; stubborn donkey is there bracing his feet in revolt. White pony has a flowing mane and a short bobbed tail. Christmas angel trails white wings feathered in frosting. Cocky snowman, laughing clown. Santa Claus in a red coat trimmed in white fur—you will love every last one. The prices range from 15 to 35 cents.
One glance at the gingerbread people and you know a woman with an understanding of children has given her heart and hand to such small affairs. Daughter Susan was two when Mother Irene felt inspired to decorate the Christmas tree with Mother Goose characters fashioned from gingerbread. That was the beginning, there never came an ending. Ever after there were gingerbread trims for Susan's tree which changed in character as the child grew older. Neighbors came begging “Make a set for our tree.” Gingerbread fun grew into gingerbread business. Last Christmas ten thousand of these figures hung on Christmas trees around town, every one handmade in the kitchen of the Long Island baker.
Nancy S. Barns is making her fine fruit cake again in the big kitchen of her historic house of that three-century-old town of East Hampton, Long Island. It was her Grandmother Hawkins' fruit cake, the recipe brought over from England with the Oakleys when they settled at Center Moriches 250 years ago.
It is a cake heavy with fruit, hand-cut fruit, hand-culled. Citron, raisins, and currants jockey for position in the fruity mixture. There is candied peel, both the lemon and the orange, and just enough flour to keep all the good things together. Preparation of the fruit is the job that takes time. Mrs. Barns picks over the fruits piece by piece to be sure they are free of stems, of hard spots. Larger fruits are cut into uniform bits. Now a little of the flour is mixed with the fruit to separate the pieces. It's very well mixed to prevent its sticking in the wrinkles of the raisins to remain throughout the baking. The spices are sifted with the flour not once but many times to insure a perfect blending. The mixture is baked in loaf pans lined with greased paper for the high percentage of fruit and sugar make it a cake easy to scorch. Now the long, slow baking while the raisins and that multitude of currants plump up soft and tender. The cake carries a substantial flavor and does what every woman so admires—it slices gauze-thin. This Long Island fruit cake sells direct from the kitchen, ＄1.75 a pound plus postage, please, for weight two pounds and over.
It's a thing. We mean the smoked eel that is turning up in pinkish thin slices on cocktail bread fingers—the price ＄1.15 a pound, and a pound feeds a multitude. Nyborg and Nelson, 841 Third Avenue, carry smoked eel the year round.
The Major Grey chutneys are returning from India, but with shipments intermittent, not more than one third enough of these fine chutneys is here to meet the demand. Javin brand is back, this claiming its unique proprietary flavor, the result of combining cane sugar with a type of mango grown in the Arabian Sea, with grated ginger from Cochin, a southern Indian port, and of course there is the important ritual of its unique spicing. The spicing formula copies the early Hindu method for preserving mangoes through the rainy season. This chutney is no longer marketed in the tall-necked bottle (the packers' stocks are depleted and no more available now) so Javin chutney goes to market in plain mason jars.
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