Starting A Christmas Tradition: Gingerbread Houses

   I have made many efforts to squelch the Christmas Spirit of "Gimme". So far not many have worked. But I thought of this about a week ago, in hopes of having something for the children to look forward to other than presents, maybe something fun, Chipps family style (build, make a mess, eat, argue, complain, get way too excited, build, eat...) Gingerbread Houses. It's a winner! All voted that we do this again next year, and with what we learned the hard way this time, it should be twice as fun next year.

   The day before construction we sat down and designed a basic house (Note #1. looking back, this pattern made a very tall house- I think it would have been nicer to have been more squat). I cut the pattern out of manilla folders, which made a nice sturdy re-usable pattern piece. The "double door" was meant to settle a dispute over a door on center or a door to the side (Note# 2. Door to the side made this piece very weak and had to be mended and handled carefully).

   I followed a recipe out of my Joy Of Cooking book. It wasn't all that tasty so I don't feel bad about not sharing. To make 6 houses I made 3 batches of this recipe, we had plenty left over for additions, gables and porch roofs.
   It was much easier to roll out when I crumbled and patted the dough out in the pan. It also helped rolling it in the cookie sheet. Since some pans are deeper sometimes I pulled it out of the pan to finish rolling to a nice 1/4'' thick. Parchment paper a must!

 When we laid the pattern out I left space between the pieces for the dough to rise without sticking to each other. Cutting this way saved me from warping the pieces tying to move them back into the pan. My mom set up a formula on the fly to keep track of how many pieces we needed of each pattern. This got very confusing for some reason, mainly because I didn't cut one house out at a time. In order to use up every corner of the pan of dough, I often added a chimney piece or door, etc. (Note # 3: Have the pattern for the roof and sides less the same size- we were continually confusing the pieces)

  The full cookie sheet was then passed on to Bryon who took charge of the stained glass. His team had an assorted pile of crushed Jolly Ranchers to fill in custom designed cut outs. This was a very popular feature in our project. Everyone had a unique window plan - dogs, moon, trees, butterflies, etc. ( Note #4: This wasn't the way Bryon really wanted to do this: his plan was to fill in frames made from pretzels and install them into pre-cut and cooked walls...next year.)

 My recipe said to cook the dough 11 to 15 minutes. But after 5 minutes the candy was melted and started to bubble. We were worried about the bubbling so we only baked each pan for 6 minutes. (Note# 5: Bake the dough for 5 minutes, remove from oven and fill in with the crushed candies and bake 5  to 7 minutes more...try this next year) Needless to say the under-baked dough caused lots of problem down the road.

     But the stained glass was sooo pretty! (Note#6: Store baked house pieces flat, smooth side up [upside down] in a dry cool location! Or else the candy sweats, sticks to everything and cracks when you're trying to separate it. Or just leave it on the parchment paper. I ran out of space and needed to start stacking. We let it all set out overnight until that afternoon. Plenty of time for humidity to do it's work...uugh.

    I also made the Royal Icing the night before construction day. I followed the Joy of Cooking book recipe again. I wanted to be sure and use the cooked eggwhite recipe especially since these were store bought eggs, but the recipe calls for using a microwave. Instead I had very good results using my burner on low constantly beating on high speed to prevent scorching...and I still scorched it a bit but no one noticed!

    As a result of under-baking the dough and stuck pieces we had several breakages to repair. Completely repairable on the underside (smooth side) if possible. 

   This is another thing that can either make the project fun or way too intense. Note#7: The consistency of the icing should be like thick toothpaste. If it is too wet (add more powdered sugar) it will take longer to be firm enough to support all those M&Ms and jelly beans, everyone gets impatient and frustrated. I know this for a fact. Note # 8: If you are going to reuse used plastic bags make sure they are sturdy and free from stale cookie crumbs. Fill the bags with about 1 1/2 cups of icing and snip off a bottom corner of the bag to squeeze out the icing - not to big!

 I took this opportunity to pre-make all the chimney pieces in hopes to make the following day go smoother.

Ready to Go!

  Each little house has a individual look. But the messy hurried look is the same on every house.

 It was very exciting and I had many teaching opportunities to show patience and cooperation...

 Look at me, such a patient fun mom (oh brother)...why doesn't every notice this!

   A lot of work can go flat pretty quick! Repeating Note #7: If my Royal Icing had been stiffer and our cookie pieces baked to a hard crisp this would probably not have happened. The last houses were so sturdy we could hold then any which way and they wouldn't give.

     Holding our breath before it collapsed again. I felt pretty bad, Nathanial worked so hard on his "cabin".

 And then one day a few short hours later we experience extreme defacement of private property by the owner himself.