Gingerbread House | By Katie

At work, they've really cut back on expenses, even holiday gatherings. This year, instead of a bike building event, where we were given drink tickets and fed a turkey dinner, followed by a scavenger hunt around campfires. 

This years event was "virtual" meaning I sat in my office chair at home and attempted to make small talk as we were broken out into groups to play online Pictionary. I won my groups round, however lost to the larger group round. 

The bigger story here is the gingerbread house decorating contest. They mailed everyone a gingerbread house making kit. Everything came pre-made (the gingerbread being especially thick, dry, and hard) with a bag of questionable frosting, two smaller tubes of red and green frosting, along with some sprinkles, and candies. 

Mine arrived a day later than we were told. I knew there was a problem when I saw the package, and noted there was a flattened end of the box. We did have a deadline of when we must submit photos.

I opened everything up, it actually seemed in-tact! Until I took the shrink wrap off the gingerbread. The sides were crumbled, the front/backs were cracked. The roof and gingerbread people were thankfully spared.

The sad, broken gingerbread pieces

I wasn't ready to give up on it after the opening of the box. I thought I would first try to glue everything back together with the included frosting, if it held, great! If not, solve the problem from there. I really wanted to make the windows "real" so I looked up a quick internet search on how to make candy "glass". Sugar, water, corn syrup, and cream of tarter were simple enough. I threw the ingredients on the stove with my candy thermometer in to track the temperature to its "hard crack" stage. While it simmered on the stove, I microwaved the gingerbread pieces in the microwave in a damp cloth so I could cut out the window pieces. It made it much softer to cut this way. After I got the windows cut out of the way, I worked on using the frosting to glue the broken seams back in place. This seemed to work, and while doing all of these tasks to all four sides, I forgot about the candy on the stove, so it burned to a deep amber color. No problem, it provided a nice warm glow with a 70's glass aesthetic that wasn't bad. 

After I poured the windows and let them cool, I quickly learned that the frosting in the cracks would not be enough. So I found my kids popsicle craft sticks, and used them in the backs to hold everything together. It was ugly, but it will never be visible. 

I made my own royal icing as I wanted to "flood" the frosting to cover the gingerbread, to further hide the damage. I wanted the house to look like it had dark siding. I couldn't find any merengue powder free, chocolate royal icing on the internets, so I improvised by using my go-to recipe, subbing 1/4 cup of cocoa powder for powdered sugar. It did the trick. I know in reality that this house is not actually going to be eaten, while it is edible, it may not be as tasty as if I used a better recipe. I did find that the chocolate version took longer to set, but again, this is just for looks, and it looked great. My house got its dark siding!

I'll also throw out that I decorated the pieces flat, prior to standing them up. 

Now I had pretty much covered all of the cracks and damage that was given to me. The pieces were staying together, and the windows I thought looked really cool!

I don't have photos of the roof construction, I knew I wanted the house to be lit from the inside. Because, it has real windows, obviously. I took the approach of a halloween pumpkin, in that the roof needed to come off so I could place LED lights inside. If you've ever assembled one of these kits, you know that the roof is heavy, and can make-or-break the integrity if it is connected using only icing. I thought ahead, and made my own trusses out of the popsicle sticks. Those were assembled using Elmers glue. When I was ready to stand the pieces up and piece the house together, I melted pure sugar in a skillet, then quickly dipped the pieces needing support in the molten sugar, and rapidly stuck them together, which made an instant bond. I did this with the trusses under the roof pieces, the bottoms of the house, as well as the sides. I also took a spoon and poured the liquid amber down each edge to really make sure this house was not going to be blown down by any wolf, ...or child

After successfully standing the house up. I ended up stringing lights through a hole that was in the bottom from the crumbing puzzle, and kept the switch to the lights on the exterior. I realized the fault in the pumpkin approach because I had made my rooftop thatched with life cereal. If you are familiar, life is a more delicate texture, lifting a roof made with the material was not sustainable. The roof was carefully set with its trusses on top, there was a gap, but it held. 

Finally I gave the gingerbread people some puffy jackets, and warm fire to keep cozy near. Don't worry, their little foot pads got boots for the snow. I surrounded the cozy house with frosting snow, they got a green and red path to their doorstep, and lastly some powdered sugar snow dusted just recently. 

(worthy of another post, we had to depart for the evening to head to not one, but TWO graham cracker gingerbread decorating events at the Preschool, followed by the elementary school, so my house was wrapped up).

After getting the kids to bed after the school events, I set up Thom's seamless tabletop paper, stuck my gingerbread house platform on a small rotating lazy-suzan, propped up with duplo blocks to conceal the light switch. I quickly snapped some images of my gingerbread house for my entry. 

"Day" at the Gingerbread cabin

"Night"

Happy Gingerbread people with their fire. Note their choice of puffies

So was it all worth it?

You bet it was! You are looking at a first place gingerbread entry! By popular vote, I came in first. My co-worker, Mire who put mushrooms on her roof came in second. Third place was also on my team, coming in with creative problem solving after his dog ate all four sides of his kit, and was left with only the roof pieces, made a tent scene. I would love to point out that my immediate team cleaned houses with all winning slots. 

Here are the comments that were said while my house was on display for the showing and telling:

Mostly. I had fun. I don't get a lot of "screen time" in my job, so I think there was a small amount of surprise in my entry. 

Now my kids just want to go crazy adding all of the brightly colored confections I did not add. Maybe a second update will come from it.