Daring Bakers Make Gingerbread Houses... Home For The Holidays

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.


For someone who's into cake decorating , I can say Ive never made a Gingerbread house. It was always on my list. I'm amazed I even got it done with the craziness of December, I can think of no challenge more apropos than this.Linda of Make Life Sweeter, who I meet in Vienna last week insisted I do it as we dined over Wiener Schnitzel in the Nachtsmarket.

Certain Someone is finally home and the holidays will be as they should, warm and comfy in the confines of our home. I don't want much for Christmas , really....



I remember last Christmas in Germany and hearing the news the late great Eartha Kitt had died. They don't make stars like that anymore.
Back to the Gingerbread. I had the same issues as everyone else with a very dry dough. I used Ana's Good Housekeeping recipe and added more cream. After chilling overnight, the moisture expanded and the dough became manageable. Still a dry one compared to to other recipes, but it worked. I m glad I used cheap Flour for this as 9 1/2 cups of flour were used. I still have plenty to make another house if I wish! Here is the template I used.
I had wanted to shingle the roof with some sliced black licorice fudge I had from Denmark. Unfortunately when I was satisfied and turned my back to wash my hands, the roof caved in. I had to scrape the roof and rebuild. Thankfully I had enough powdered sugar to make more royal icing to salvage a messy situation.
My decorations are just piped and painted royal icing (food color gels), pecan pralines I made, some coconut flakes for snow, and edible glitter. I broke some cinnamon sticks to make a wood pile. Certain Someone was impressed and we are bringing this to his bosses house for Christmas later. Although next year he challenged me to make a house like the White House's Gingerbread House.

Please Check out my fellow bakers. You can find the hostesses recipes and instructions on their sites which I have linked at the beginning.

Certain Someone and I wish you Happy Holidays, Peace, Health and Prosperity.