With my dad being the official “Gingerbread Man” in these parts–we couldn’t stand to let the season go by without that cinnamon and cloves scent in the air. So the girls got together at daddy’s shop…
And made a busload of honeycake dough.
The official recipe is called Lebkuchen. It’s a very stiff dough, so daddy’s mixer came in pretty handy. My little Kitchen Aid would have been smoking with this stuff.
Each one of these dough balls will make one pan.
One pan will make one house.
Here they are after being baked and cut and stacked.
Each of us had our own idea of what the “perfect” candy was–so when we got together on Daddy’s birthday, to actually put the houses together we had a ton of candy. Just looking at all this stuff gave me a sugar rush. It must have been the vapor of sweetness in the air. :]
**The most important tip for having a successful gingerbread house experience is to decorate the front, back and sides of your house BEFORE you put the pieces together.
This will save you from having to work in tight, crazy places and also keep you from knocking your house down while trying to glue candy to an upright house–not cool.
Once you paste the house together, then you’re ready to frost the top. We use Royal Icing to glue it all together and Fluffy White for the roof and yard “snow.” April is really good with the icicles. Me…not so much.
So, here are the results of our Gingerbread fest.
April’s professional house
Jacob’s house–ready for snow!
Lyndi’s Orange Tree House
Lyndi’s stained glass star
Rhen’s Angry House…don’t ask. You missed the Teddy Graham hanging from the rafters and the snowman with a rifle. It was not pretty. I should have known there was just too much laughter coming from his end of the table. Boys can be so odd.
My silly little house with pink malt balls. Ummmm…. Note: Cream Savers are not particularily good team players. They slid off my roof all night. They get a D in behavior and staying put.
Pretty crazy about that chimney though.
Jillian’s Whoville House
Back of the Whoville House
Our very own Gingerbread Babies and their first taste of Great-Grampa’s Honey Cake. Setting it into their DNA very early on.
Daddy would be so proud!!
This post is dedicated to my dear friend Sue Sheets…because she remembers.
We’ve been translated into French!! See this post on Blue Marguerite.
those are just awesome! Your daddy would be SO PROUD!- I got kind of teary eyed looking at all those! what great tips- I would never have thought of decorating the sides before i put it together- I just might have to try this again! need to know how you did that fluffy stuff though-that looks so cool! great job ladies-and you too Rhen-creative expression! just make sure his isnt ticking!
lol, guess I am a noob!!! you had the link for the frostings on there!
Yay for Gingerbread houses!!! I think we should do people too!!! 🙂 Then we’ll have our crazy houses and a yearly edible representations of ourselves. Those are pictures posterity would love, I’m sure! 😉
Perfect explanation! I keep thinking of more ideas for what could be done with them. Crazy how that happens when given a little more freedom (or maybe just freeing up my brain from all school things in general could be a factor too… it’s a toss up).
Oh, and Sue I love that you said noob 🙂
I loved that word!
I want the recipe for the gingerbread, well actually the lebkuchen. Eric LOVES lebkuchen but on the rare occasion we find it here, it’s so expensive! But a recipe for lebkuchen that we could also even use for gingerbread houses would be awesome!
Ok, Abby–I’ve put it in the recipe section…hope you love it!
Fantastic houses!!! And great that you got together to make them. Creating is fun and building memories even more so.