Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Daring Baker's Gingerbread Houses

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
IMG_7447
At first I thought I was way too busy to do this challenge but then I kind of got excited by it & in the end Matt & I had so much fun making our little houses that I'm really glad we did it. I decided to do a village of small houses which for some reason seemed more managable to me than one big house. Then I spread the project out over 3 days which also made it not seem so big. Day 1, I made the dough & let it refrigerate overnight. Day 2, using templates for 2" x 3" house that I found here & here.
IMG_7430IMG_7432IMG_7435
I just cut the templates out of paper & laid them on the dough then cut around them with a sharp knife. Here are some things I learned. 1. Flour your template. 2. Press the knife down to cut the dough don't drag it or your dough will pull. 3. Remove the template right away or the dough will stick to it & ruin your piece. I also cut out a few small trees to add to my village. I used different cake decorating tips to make textures on the roof pieces before baking. I didn't have much trouble with the dough shrinking while cooking though it did puff up in some places. I let the cooked gingerbread pieces sit overnight on the counter to get really dry.
Day 3, was all about decorating & assembly. I good stiff royal icing is really key to getting the houses to build easily. With thinned it out with water as needed for different types of decorating. I used meringue powder in my icing which worked really well.
IMG_7439IMG_7440
We did some of the piping work for windows & doors before putting the houses together. We figured it would be easier to do with the pieces lying flat. I made a base for the village from a piece of cardboard covered in tin foil. Then we piped a line of icing for each side of the houses to help secure them. After all four sides were up we let the icing dry before putting on the roofs. Then came the fun part of adding all the other decorations.
IMG_7449
We thinned the icing out with a little water to coat the trees & make the dripping snow on the roof. Thick icing made great smoke from the chimney.
IMG_7457IMG_7454IMG_7452IMG_7451
The next week I got invited to my cousin Lucas' first grade class to help make a gingerbread house as well. We went a little easier route by attaching graham crackers to milk cartons with frosting but the results were just as cute!
Gingerbread House Day
This post is dedicated to my $7 Target hand beater that met an untimely death while making royal frosting.

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted.
© 2007-2009 Kathy Lewinski

29 comments:

  1. Love your little village! It's super pretty with the white, red and green. Looks like you had fun and the dough seemed to work quite well for you. Excellent job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. RIP hand mixer, RIP. :)

    This is so fun. Your village looks great. I just love gingerbread houses. My mom always makes a great one, but she usually starts with a kit and decorates on her own from there. This is impressive.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, great job on your gingerbread houses!! I love the texture you had on your rooftops!

    ReplyDelete
  4. RIP hand mixer....job well done. It's a heck of a way to go.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your village is wonderful! The details are great, especially on the roof. Wish one of my classes involved making gingerbread houses - lucky Lucas and classmates!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Your village and your cute cousin are so sweet.

    Too bad about the Tarjay mixer but now you have a great excuse to go shopping! Just wait until the holiday hoopla is over though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your houses look to have come out perfectly! Great little village!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Those are so cute! We made gingerbread houses this year, but I ended up using graham crackers as I didn't think I'd be able to pull off homemade ones. Looks like you did perfectly!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I can't believe that this was the dare for December! It's such a hard challenge, but you accomplished it with flying colors!

    ReplyDelete
  10. They're so sweet! I love all of the houses =D.

    ReplyDelete
  11. your houses look fantastic and delicious!

    ReplyDelete
  12. congratulations on this daring baker! your village is just lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  13. What sweet little houses. I think it would be too much for me to do though!

    ReplyDelete
  14. your gingerbread village looks adorable :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. Oh so cute!
    I love your little village and the texture on your roofs is so neat.
    I'm from MN too - hope you survived the snowstorm!

    ReplyDelete
  16. My condolences to your hand mixer :( But at least your houses were fabulous!

    ReplyDelete
  17. WOW
    I'm sure the gingerbread men love to lives in your amazing village
    what a beautiful village :)
    Happy Holidays !

    ReplyDelete
  18. I love how festive your little village is with the Christmas colors!! Great job on this challenge! :)
    Merry Christmas!!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Gorgeous little houses! You did a wonderful job on your gingerbread houses.

    Natalie @ Gluten A Go Go

    ReplyDelete
  20. Aw what a precious village! I love your textured roofs.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Oh nooo poor $7 beater! I hope you got your money's worth out of it! :)

    Impressive village of houses, by the way!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Awww... you made an entire gingerbread village! Way to go on this month's challenge, you rocked it out! Keep up the amazing bakes.

    ReplyDelete
  23. A whole village. I love it. You were really ambitious.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Your colored houses are just ouzing Christmas all over the place. Those roofs. The green details. The lovely red. Love it!

    http://mangerie.blogspot.com/2009/12/het-kerstdessert-met-hoofdletters.html

    ReplyDelete
  25. LOVE IT! I adore all the piping details on the windows. Great job, you two!

    ReplyDelete
  26. WOW, what an absolutely perfect and beautiful little village! I had enough trouble making one house, so kudos to you for making several! The -piping is phenomenal! Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Wow, what an amazing and fun village you have there! Happy 2010! :)

    ReplyDelete
  28. I love your interpretation of the challenge! It was a great idea to texture the roof pieces. Oh, and sorry about your mixer. :(

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comments! Matt & I love to read them but if you link to online drugs or real estate or such in anyway we will delete you. Due to the amount of spam we are now moderating all comments.