The Land of Ginger lay in the shadow of The Great Molasses Volcano on the island of New Guinea. It was a farming community, run completely by little ginger beings.

The Great Molasses Volcano had lay dormant for hundreds of years. Its last eruption had flattened The Land of Ginger; not one ginger being survived, not one ginger house survived, not one ginger artefact survived. The molasses was so hot, that it completely liquified everything that it’s syrupy fingers streaked across.

Not for a whole century, had any being with a heart-beat, successfully crossed what had been dubbed, “The Molasses Annihilation Zone”…or for short, The MAZ. The zone had a heavy melancholic vibration pulsing through it like a cursed heartbeat. Stories of endeavours to cross The MAZ were well spread. Apparently anyone who’d stepped foot in the area had been engulfed by a despondency so ferocious, that they’d gone mad on the spot. Some even died instantly from a ravenous misery that instantly diseased their mind and bodies.

One day, a wandering nomad paced the edges of The MAZ. He’d been collecting spices in the Maluku Islands, an archipelago within Indonesia, and had made his way to New Guinea to trade his spices for some coffee beans. The MAZ however, produced a hurdle for him. You see he was heading towards a coffee farm in the Highland Province of Chimbu, and it would be much faster to reach his destination by straight-lining it through the centre of The MAZ. If he sidled the edges of The MAZ, it would add an extra day to his travels, such was the enormity of The MAZ area.

The nomad psychologically swallowed some nails to toughen up his resolve. He would attempt The MAZ crossing. Surely the stories he’d heard were just wives tales, folklore spread by frivolous gossips.

The nomad entered The MAZ.
The nomad took 5 steps forward.
The Nomad fell to the ground.

Madness and misery consumed every atom, every DNA strand, every molecule within his body. There he collapsed. There he died.

However, from this forlorn story, a sunbeam of blessedness gleams through.

The nomad’s spices were blown across The MAZ and they embedded themselves into the ground. Up from the rubble, a forest of spice trees began to bloom. The nomad must have been carrying cinnamon, cloves and cocoa beans, for it is these trees that stretched their tendrils skyward until they stiffened into long branches of trees four metres tall. And as the trees grew, a magical thing occurred. The aromatic spices warmed the air and soil of The MAZ, cleansing the area of its melancholy with a wild, unexplainable alchemy. The curse of the forlorn MAZ area was lifted.

And so the forest grew for 100 years. The cursed Molasses Annihilation Zone had scared all New Guinean people away from the area, so it went unseen or untouched and grew in solitude for that entire century. Until one day, a tribe of wild Ginger-Men and their Ginger-Families came upon the Cinnamon, Clove and Cocoa forest. They had heard stories of the old Land of Ginger and had come in search of it. They were the first forms of living species to approach the area in all that time.

The Ginger-Men built their homes amidst the Cinnamon, Clove and Cocoa trees. They farmed the spices that the trees so generously produced, and made a profitable living selling them to the New Guinean people.

Another century passed.

Stories of the The Molasses Annihilation Zone were forgotten. The Molasses Volcano, became nothing but a shady summit, where frolicking Ginger-Men went for recreational activities: hiking, abseiling and base-jumping being some of the favourites.
It was a century of fruition and prosperity for both the Ginger-People and the cinnamon/clove/cocoa loving New Guineans.

Then, one crisp Autumn day, this idyllic life was shaken…literally. It was a group of pubescent Teen-Gingers who were hosting a music festival on top of the old Molasses Volcano, that first suffered the volcano’s wrath. A small tremor was making the ground shake beneath the festival goer’s feet. They however thought it was the loud music making the earth reverberate beneath them. And it wasn’t until scolding hot molasses globbed up from beneath the stage, that the music loving Gingers discovered what was really happening. But by then it was too late…

The tremor escalated into a ground splitting shake and scolding hot molasses spewed forth. Sadly the festival came to an end, it could not survive hotter then hot molasses.

In fact, every Teen-Ginger at the festival, did not survive.

Dead as a doorknob they were…sorry to be blunt, but it’s the reality of the situation.

The molasses careened down the volcano’s slopes taking out every Ginger-Being in it’s path. Pretty soon, the whole community and it’s aromatic forest, was drowning in a boiling hot bath of molasses.

The Ginger-men and Ginger-Families were wiped out once again.

There is however, a happier…and might I add tastier…ending to this tale.

When the blistering heat of the ginger-spiked molasses belted into the spice trees, a magical transformation took place. The trees exploded into cookies…honest to God!

At the time of the last eruption, no cinnamon, clove or cocoa trees grew from the land. The aromas and powers of these herbs enabled this spicy but sweet metamorphis to take place. And instead of turning the grounds into another Molasses Anihilation Zone, it turned them into a sweet field of Chocolate, Ginger, Clove and Molasses Cookies.

And they lived happily, gingerly after…the end.

RECIPE

I made these cookies so that I could contribute my post to the blogging group “Baked Sunday Mornings”. This group, on a fortnightly basis, bakes a recipe from one of the three Baked cook books that I always rave on about. The recipe is in the Baked Explorations book and you can purchase the book here.

4 comments

SandraM February 11, 2013 - reply

What a wonderful story. Great job! And your cookies look fabulous too. Hope you enjoyed them.
- mumbleandrumbles February 13, 2013 - reply
  
  Cookies were lovely, I was feeling generous and even shared them with the neighbours…and the cat! Soooooo glad you liked my story
Liz February 11, 2013 - reply

Beautiful cookies!
- mumbleandrumbles February 13, 2013 - reply
  
  Thanks…I’m going to fill them with home-made ice-cream now and have a cookie sandwich…hell yeah!

Chocolate, Ginger, Cinnamon, Clove and Molasses Cookies