That's right--my very first gingerbread house! I have helped make one before...but it was many years ago. I think I was eleven or twelve. I wasn't without help this time either, however. My nephew spent all afternoon yesterday and today helping roll out dough, bake pieces and then helping with construction itself. His girlfriend pitched in with the decorations, too. What a project!
Yesterday we stuffed ourselves with cookie dough--the best part of any baking project--as we cut and baked the pieces for the house. Today was the actual construction.
The royal icing, the "mortar", turned out to be the trickiest part. I don't have an electric mixer here... so after attempting with my hand blender, we resorted to the old-fashioned way of whipping up a meringue. I thought my arm was going to fall off! The recipe promised 7-10 min of "beating on high speed". After an hour of taking turns with the darned stuff we decided it was good enough: no stiff peaks, but it wasn't so runny as to be impossible to use, either.
The next obstacle was how best to apply the mortar to the roof and walls. A butter knife wasn't going to cut it (hahaha). In the States, of course, ziplock bags abound and cutting off the tip of a corner will give you a perfect pastry tube for delicate decorating, but no such luck in España. To make the gingerbread dough I used the last of a bag of C&H brown sugar my mom sent me God knows how long ago and you guessed it--ziplock seal! We rinsed out the bag, cut off the tip of one corner and, voila! We were in the construction business.
So far our creation is holding up, though the roof is sagging and one wall seems to be sinking in on itself. I think the semi-runny icing is to blame. That, and the fact that we were in a hurry to finish and so didn't let the walls properly harden before putting on the roof or beginning to decorate. In any case, we took pictures and my nephew can't wait to eat it, so this one's not going to be one of those gingerbread houses that sits around all through the New Year as a holiday decoration! ;) If it doesn't collapse tonight we might wait until Tuesday to enjoy it with a tall glass of milk!
I'll leave you with some pictures of the baking/construction process:
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| Francisco rolling out the dough. |
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| Only missing the decorations. |
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| Rudolph flying over the roof. ;) |
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| I think I'm most proud of our "brick" chimney. |
Hope you're all gearing up for the holidays and enjoying similarly delicious projects! Merry Christmas. :)
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