Gingerbread Houses

OK, I know I really should have shared this before Christmas but no sooner had I finished them than the Day was upon me and I had some kind of very odd 'flu' which left me with a fever on and off for days... in fact I fell asleep on the couch on Christmas morning and the lovely husband only woke me at 1pm.....with a whole Christmas "lunch" still to cook!  Guess I must have needed it though.

And then there was work.  Yes indeed!  After the jolly holiday we set to work on my sewing room..... which never quite got completed as we went away for a few days over Old and New (quaint Dutch way of saying New Year's - I quite like it!) ... et cetera, et cetera.  But it is certain to be finished in the very near future and then I can reveal......

NOW, back to Gingerbread Houses.

Nearly 2 years ago I made a choice to give up sugar (amongst other things).  It is the best thing I ever did but it left me with a small problem.  I LOVE making and decorating kids cakes.  So how to resolve this dilemma?  Well the answer is of course obvious. You make cakes for other people!!!

 I love the idea of the Gingerbread House, the Hansel and Gretel magical creation that makes eyes widen and little mouths begin to drool.  I really wanted to make a Gingerbread house for my girls this Christmas, but didn't want all that junk in the house and certainly didn't want them eating it all.  So I came up with a plan to make one and then send it in to school where it could be admired and shared by all the little classmates.  However I have TWO children in different classes, it could only mean one thing.....make TWO Gingerbread Houses!

There are quite a few recipes for Gingerbread on the Internet...here is the one that I used.  The template was a mish-mash of houses I liked.... I needed to make three batches of that gingerbread recipe to make my two houses.  I've only shown one at the moment as I'm experiencing technical difficulties uploading pics but you get the idea... perhaps when the bugs have been ironed out I'll put some of the other house up.

  

 

I used Royal Icing to glue it all together - I was surprised how well this worked actually - I only needed to support the one roof with a few tins of cat food!  I had visions of the whole thing collapsing and having to stand for hours holding bits together but that Royal Icing sticks!

  

   

And of course, we need sweets to decorate!  This was quite extravagant but I blame Pinterest!

So here I present to you Gingerbread House number one.... Welcome!



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it.  The girls loved it!  The kids at school loved it!  I loved making them so all in all a success!  Oh, I should mention that if you are going to make your own gingerbread house next Christmas, allow yourself at least four days to make it.  One day to make the cookie shapes, one to glue the house together (to allow for drying time) one to glue the roof and one to decorate.  If you are going to do this with the kiddos, then I'd only present them with the glued house and let them get on with it.  My girls were knocked down with the 'flu' when I made the houses, so showed little interest... perhaps next year they can have one of their own to decorate!

 

 

 

Happy New Year everyone!

 

xxx