Jeremy and I have been watching a few gingerbread and cookie baking shows this holiday season. One of them was specifically on the subject of gingerbread houses. A woman from Argentina moved to Canada and competed against 2 other bakers and won the title of Christmas Gingerbread Champion.
Last year, we made a gingerbread Eiffel Tower with Twizzlers, white chocolate and turkish delight. Check it out HERE!! This year we comprised a gingerbread centerpiece for my mother. She wanted something simple, but we like themes and artistic flair, so we agreed to a gingerbread version of Snoopy’s 1st prize doghouse decorated to the max for Christmas to compliment Mom’s Snoopy invitations.
Lauren’s family used to be in the remodeling business and even built two houses as well as their own in the 2000’s. I on the other hand have a construction-grade recipe for gingerbread courtesy of my grandmother’s cookbook. What? You didn’t think that all gingerbread was alike, did you? Moisture from things like molasses, milk, and eggs are going to soften the dough and make it less stable. Last year the cookie came out OK for our needs. This year however we wanted to kick it up a notch and make sure the dough could hold up the structure.
Construction-grade gingerbread is SUPER dry and almost feels like wet sand on the beach while you’re mixing. It took a lot work just to incorporate the wet and dry, let alone kneed it. Give this job to your kid who loves to get messy and squish things in their hands.
When we refrigerated the dough, it hardened until it was too tough to roll out, even when we let it warm up to room temperature. It was all worth the overnight wait in the end. After cooling, the cookies were nice and firm, no crumble at all, and didn’t spread like last year. We recommend this recipe to anyone trying to make homemade gingerbread houses for show and/or a fun Christmas activity, especially with friends and kids. This sort of craft really brings out the visionary artist in all of us. Just don’t expect it to be very tasty, unless you like eating stale adobe, or need to break a tooth. But once you have your geometry straight, you can use it like a template.
Chocolate cement worked so well, we did it again. It cooled like mortar, but we added some rice crispy treats inside just in case. For the roof we used graham cracker layers and no beam. We know, they laid out the wrong way, but it was still a very rustic style dog house like a kid would build.
Royal icing comes from fruit cake toppings because the British royal family used this particular icing at weddings. It’s made from cream of tartar, powdered sugar and egg whites. We didn’t know that, so we made our icing out of regular milk and powdered sugar. It was super runny at first, but we thickened it up to almost right before sticking it in the fridge. Our chocolate cement worked well, but we couldn’t pipe it and it wasn’t too clean. Maybe next time we get a centerpiece idea, we could give the royals a try.
While the gingerbread chilled out, our first 2 build-a-bear kids Emma-Belle and Prince Daniel wanted to play with the rice crispy treats and make a present box full of our extra candy. Prince Daniel loves the crunchy sound the cereal makes when you mush it, and licking marshmallow off of his paws.
Emma-Belle came up with the idea of it being a treasure box. She molded the mush into a box shape and filled it up with candy. She was REALLY tempted to eat the treats instead of molding them, but we helped her by singing a working song while she shaped it.
This next part was what I had been anticipating for the past 2 months, covering everything in fondant, candy, icing and everything else I can find onto this doghouse! We heard from another website that it was best to treat fondant like wonton wrappers when covering cookies; just a quick dab of water and place it flat on the surface only adjusting a tad with your fingers. It’s William the genie and Princess Jasmine’s first Christmas this year, so we’re letting them help. Will likes to play around with dyes, making the fondant just the right shade before rolling and cutting it out into pieces to lay on the house. He even helped us make a wreath for the door with a pink bow and everything!
The tricky part was this graham cracker roof. If we made a roof out of gingerbread at this angle, we would have been worried about it being too heavy. That, and we ran out of time to do another batch before the party. Roofing shingles are kind of thin compared to walls anyhow. This way, if people want to eat our masterpiece, it would have a little variety. Not everyone likes gingerbread. If someone doesn’t want a thick spicy hard cookie, they can have a lighter sweeter cookie-esque piece.
Jasmine doesn’t like gooey or sticky rice crispy treats, or working with dough. She’s our very girly build-a-bear daughter. She was put in charge of Snoopy’s outer decorations. She strung Twizzlers all around the roof, and put Christmas light shaped pieces on top. We practiced with a few pieces during an icing kit lesson and made a few candy balls and shapes. Our little sultana must’ve liked my pink star enough to put it on the roof. Then she sifted powdered sugar on top so it could look like fresh fallen snow. She worked all through the night and fell asleep at the counter!
It was a big hit at the party. Now, the question is…what are we going to do next time? Do we have to wait until next year, or should we do another cookie house for other holidays? Just imagine, a big castle made out of cookies, a white house made out of cookies, Little House on the Prairie Walnut Grove made out of cookies, maybe we could….
Lauren,
What?
Let’s keep it simple for a little while, please?
Fine.