Experience has taught me that the first recipe is really too sticky for warm weather. I made these one May and they just never quite set up right. Nevertheless, I will share with you a typed paragraph, which I copied from somewhere in 1981.
One Witsuntide (the 7th Sunday after Easter) or Mayday, each person receives a large gingerbread figure called, “Jack-in-the-Green,” “Jack-in-the-Bush,” or “Witsun Lout.” On his head is a May wreath of dried, crushed parsley or small sprigs of parsley or out-of-the-green coloring mixture recipe. Modern green sprinkles or bright green, lime icing serves equally well. Use raisins (or currants) for eyes and nose. A lemon or lime peel can serve as a mouth.The second recipe also works better in cool, dry weather, like December.
How I make Jack-in-the-Green gingerbread men is I buy the Pepridge Farm gingerbread men cookies. I mix the following buttercream frosting recipe.
To decorate, you will need a frosting tube or a knife. I can never find my decorating tubes in time, so I’m always using a knife.
Spread a smear of frosting on the head to represent the head wreath. Then put a stripe of frosting katycorner from the right shoulder to the left hip, or vice versa. Now dip the Jack-in-the-Green man cookie into the lime green sprinkles. Repeat with all cookies. Set in coverable cookie pans in the refrigerator so that the frosting will dry and get hard. Do not lay cookies on top of each other, or you’ll have a mooshy mess.
Take to your next May event. It’ll be a hit. If you have marching green men from BOG (Beloved Order of the Greenman), offer the passing troop a container of cookies and they will voraciously devour them.