Gingerbread Houses

It's Christmas time again and at the Penrod house that means gingerbread houses.

This year, there were mixed feelings. Making houses for our family is a challenge. Period. But we (meaning probably only me) felt the need to really keep the tradition going, plus it is fun to put them together, so seeing as I was the only one who really wanted to do them, I took on the job on Saturday and baked all of the pieces. Luckily mom was out of the house, or she would have been super stressed out. I have learned that I am not a "clean" baker. No matter how careful I am with the flour it always ends up on the counter. For another thing I am definitely not as efficient as my mom. Emma had to make a run to the store because we ran out of molasses (in my defense, we NEVER run out of molasses). And when it comes to rolling out the dough, I can never fit the whole cookie cutter on the edge. But after about four hours of mixing and measuring and rolling and cutting, I finally finished all of the pieces for the houses. 3 batches of gingerbread later (one of which I probably didn't even need seeing as I made two whole extra houses!), I still hadn't even started the icing. 

I quit for the day and took a long, well-deserved nap. :)


I woke up early the next day and began to make the icing. Mom and Dad were on their anniversary/christmas shopping trip and were due back in the late morning. I hoped to finish the actual construction of the houses by the time they were home. Nice idea, right?

My icing came out a little runny, which I figured was a good thing because Mom had told me horror stories of how her hands cramped up because of stiff icing. Even though it hardened fine, the houses took a little bit more patience to keep up. I won't forget the feeling of utter defeat when you have the entire house together and one by one the pieces slide off.

But after an hour and a half, it was all done, and by all I mean I only had to do the pretty icing to cover up the cracks...

Well as it turns out, it takes about twice the amount of icing to make the pretty squiggly lines and a zillion times more artistry, not to mention thicker frosting (learned that one the hard way). But I discovered that if you don't look too closely, they all looked magnificent. And thank goodness for Emma, because right when I was about to die! she came in and finished the last two houses!

So it all ended up okay and my whole family enjoyed (I think) decorating them, or at least I did. Gingerbread houses definitely bring out some unique personality traits in people. There are the quiet methodical gingerbread house decorators like Dad. Once he gets going he sticks to his pattern. Then there is Jeremy who os constantly pushing himself for new "creative" ideas (this year was some Lord of the Rings eye thing and it almost killed me to see him drilling holes in my gingerbread). Then Mom who always complains that it didn't turn out like it should have, where in actuality it looks better than everyone's. Then there is Erin who wildly picks the best candies on the table and sticks them on, in the most "artsy way" possible to ensure that she will make good use of her masterpiece. And then there's me who decides to put an unhealthy ratio of wrapper to candy and shows as much of the plain gingerbread as possible.

At last, the end of the post. So yeah on a 1-10, I would give it a 9. I proved that I can make houses all by myself, and that even if nobody wants to do them, it's still fun. I learned a lot about baking and what it does to some people, like me :)

Oh, and I learned to always count how many people need houses.

Accurately.


Corinne