The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
When I discovered that December’s Daring Bakers challenge was to make a gingerbread house, I was thrilled! I’ve wanted to make a gingerbread house for years and I’d actually planned to make one with Lucas this year. (Admittedly I was going to buy Lucas a kit from IKEA for insant gratification!)
After much admiring of gingerbread houses on flickr I settled on using a pattern from Ultimate Gingerbread. I splashed out on their Pearl House pattern, purely because it looked like my dream house! Doesn’t everyone want a house with a turret?!? Extravagant (and completely unnecessary), I know. I printed off the pattern pieces and then invested a happy half an hour for sticking them to card and cutting them out.
I chose to use the recipe that Y posted from Scandinavian Baking by Beatrice Ojakangas (recipe available on Y’s site). I own this book, so it was very handy to be able to take a book into the kitchen. I did modify it ever so slightly by adding 110g of light brown sugar for sweetness as a lot of people had complained it wasn’t tasty, and I also used 2tsp of ground cloves instead of 3tsp. The dough wasn’t quite as fragrant, but it did mean that it was more kid-friendly. Cloves are quite fierce and I wasn’t sure that Lucas would appreciate them as much as me!
Despite reports of dry, troublesome dough on the Daring Bakers forum, I had no problems with the dough. All three batches came together easily; it was supple and easy to handle; and it smelled and tasted great. I chose to roll out the dough between sheets of clingfilm before chilling since it was butter-rich and bound to set up like a rock! This also sped up cutting out the pieces of the house, all eleventy million of them!
It was only when I started cutting out the pieces that I realised how huge this house was going to be!! I’d paid scant attention to the measurements when I’d cut out all the template pieces and now it was too late to shrink it down! I was sorely tempted to downsize but decided to persevere in the end; I could always invite people over to eat it!
The first pieces to be cut and baked were those for the main roof and porch roof. I then made small cardboard moulds, a bit bigger than the trimmed pieces, and assembled the cap roofs, using a heck of a lot of royal icing that I had left over from the sparkling snowflake cake. Baking the rest of the pieces took ages. I was beginning to lose the will to live when I suddenly realised that I was done. Hooray! I then crushed up an entire bag of Fox’s Glacier Mints and used them to create clear ‘glass’ windows in the house. The double-baking of the main walls made me feel a lot more comfortable about constructing the house later on!!
Compared to the tedium of baking loads of small pieces, decorating hardly took any time. I did most of it on Monday when we found ourselves snowed/iced in.
I copied shamelessly from the sample pictures provided by Ultimate Gingerbread and piped pale pink royal icing siding on to my house. Each window had white frames piped on and an evergreen garland underneath. Shiny silver balls were dotted on to the upper corners of the frames which looked very pretty. Finally I piped a gorgeous wreath on the front door and left everything to dry overnight.
Construction day dawned and I procrastinated like mad. It just seemed too difficult, despite my earlier practice with the IKEA house! I finally sucked it up and made a batch of white royal icing.
After laying out the main walls on my board (A1 foamcore sheet!), I piped a heavy bead of royal icing all around the bottom edge and the joining sides. Then I stood up the back wall and propped it upright, inside and out, with a can. From there, it was easy to get the remaining walls up and stuck properly. I only left a can against them for five minutes and then they were stuck fast. I reinforced the seams with plenty more royal icing and then moved on to making the bay window, then the leaning turret, and finally the right extension. I let it dry overnight before enlisting Dave’s help to get the rooves on.
After all that, it just took an hour to ice the roofs and dress the board. I wanted to make a little cluster of Christmas trees but I ran out of green royal icing so you can just see last year’s Christmas tree, planted out in the garden by the house’s occupants. Dessicated coconut sprinkled over a smear of royal icing makes the snow look convincing, and I finished off by piping garlands around the porch supports and using flattened Jelly Tots as a welcome mat on the porch. (Every gingerbread house needs some sweets, right?)
I want to say a BIG thank-you to Anna and Y for this fantastic challenge! I had loads of fun making my house and I hope everyone else did too!
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Wow. What a huge amount of work! A great product of being snowed in
Very beautiful, you really made something special!
OMG, your house is sooooo pretty! amazing job!
Happy Holidays and best wishes for the New Year!
Cheers,
Rosa
What a pretty house! I love the colours and the style of the house. Yes, it certainly is a dream home! Congratulations!
Oh wow.
Now this is an awesome gingerbread house!
Can I move in? }:P
It’s such a pretty house. So much detail. I totally know what you mean by losing the will to live : ) Now I’m wondering how I find the will to tear it down when the time comes!
Oh my! Your house is stunning =D. It is beautifully constructed. I love the details!
This is spectacular! What an undertaking.
WOW!! What a great job you did and a Victorian house no less!! So pretty and you did such a great job!
What a masterpiece Angela! this looks simply incredible!
Oh yes, me me me! I’ve always wanted to live in a house like that
It looks fab – what an amazing effort!
Bravo Angela! What a magnificent job! All the details are spectacular and I love how you’ve given it a Victorian theme!
Wow! This is seriously impressive, how long did it take you in total to complete it?
I have absolutely no idea! I started baking pieces and then had a couple of really bad falls, so lost a few days due to painkiller daze, and then failed to take in-progress pics or note how long it took. Glad you like it, though!!
Wow! Your house is absolutely stunning! I love all the details and colors. Great job!
Wow! What a lovely house! I think I’d like to live in it too
I am especially a fan of the turret and all your beautiful detail work.
So lovely and beautiful details. Very well done!
I love your house! It is fabulous. The details is great, and I love the wreath and the ivy in front. Now I want to start all over again! Happy New Year!
WOW, I am so impressed with your house, its beautiful. Love all the details. Great job.
What a great house! I think the pink looks fabulous – maybe next year I’ll think about pink too!
Oh, this not so little house is just lovely! This is the type of house I really wanted to make since its pretty much my dream house, but ran out of time so went for a simpler template, plus was too cheap to pay for the template:) I love that its pink!
Wow you went all out with your architecture. Amazing job. Yes you are a hard-hearted person for munching on it so soon! LOL kidding, I will soon too.
oohhh pretty pretty!! beautiful house!
wow.. what an enormous amount of work… unbelievable! Beautiful…
Waow, you did an amazing job, your gingerbread house is stunning !!
What an elegant rendition of a gingerbread house–well done!
I have already seen five or six blogs which participated in Daring Bakers Challenge. I am impressed: you’re all amazing, guys!
I would not be able to bake and assemble such a masterpiece :O
I like your victorian house version very much
Wow! Really and truly just amazing. I was happy to put together a simply little house. This is really remarkable. Beautiful job.
Angela, I knew your house would be spectacular considering how amazing your artistic skills with fondant cakes and all goodies, are! It’s absolutely beautiful, and I love the light shade of pink. Wishing you and your family a Happy and healthy New Year!
Amazing house you’ve done!!! Great job!
What a picture perfect Victorian house! Congrats on a challenge well done.
Wow – everything is just gorgeous! I love the welcome mat, the wreath on the door and the vines and holly! Great work.
A beautiful pink gingerbread house! Love the details especially the wreath at the door!
Happy new year!
Sawadee from Bangkok,
Kris
Aw wow I love your gingerbread house, its so original and pretty, love it!