Sunday, December 21, 2008

Ginger Bread Houses

The back yard of Andrea's Ginger Bread House.

I was very brave this year and decided to make gingerbread houses. Well actually it was Dan's idea, he really wanted to make one. And me being who I am i decided to go all out and make them from scratch. It went way better than I thought it would, I just ended up making way to much dough and icing (I wanted to be sure we had enough.

Before I made the dough we had to make a rough out line of what we wanted our houses to be. Well as you can see Dan is not the traditional type. he wanted something rough and rugged looking so a castle fell into that category. And for me I wanted to do a house, but a normal square house would not do. So I added another room to my house to give it more depth :)


Dan's castle model


Andrea's house model.

Then came the baking, now this took me some time. After I made the dough I had to cut the pattern out, chill the dough and then bake it. And with how big we both wanted to make our houses it took about 4 hours of baking, cooling, cutting and rolling. I have a new respect for bakers. With the left over dough I decided to make a few cookies also.

After the pieces cooled over night, we then put them together today. It took both of us to get Dan's to stand up at first, but the frosting worked better that I thought it would. And mine went up with out any trouble, with the help of some soup cans.


Using canned food to hold up the sides while it dried :)

After we got them all together the fun part started, the decorating. It took me about an hour to do mine, Dan's was a bit shorter :) I got a little carred away with the candy, bit I baught all of it so I was going to use it. Here are our finishe ginger bread houses.


Andrea's ginger bread house


Dan's ginger bread castle

Dan's ginger bread Man who is guarding his castle, with his Neco shield, mint pillow armor, and candy cane sword.

I loved doing it and Dan had a blast too. I think I will make it a tradition to make them every Christmas.

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

I love them! I can't wait for Andy to get here so that we can make ours! We usually use graham crackers, but they look really good with real gingerbread. Maybe we'll try that again this year.

Anonymous said...

Hi Annie and Dan,
Your gingerbread houses look great.
Love Mom

Kerri Rae said...

Love the house and castle! Maybe next year we can all make gingerbread dog houses! Lol...