Gingerbread House

Over the weekend Brett started work on his gingerbread house. Sunday night he mixed up a double batch of dough.

Monday night he meticulously rolled, measured, and cut the walls, roof, and base of his house. Before baking he placed Jolly Ranchers in the window holes. When the cookies baked the Jolly Ranchers melted and formed translucent window panes. We were so excited that this technique worked! I think we had seen someone do it years ago on the Food Network and we finally got around to trying it. Don't try this without a Silpat; it would be a disaster! When everything cooled, the cookies and windows pulled right off without a hitch.

Wednesday night Brett whipped up some royal icing and got to work on construction. Compared to the measuring and baking, the construction was relatively fast- only 3 hours! We made a path out of M&M's, a door out of Hershey bar, and a gate/trellis/arbor/whatever-you-call-it out of candy canes. Brett also carefully piped little picket fences onto the Silpat. My only real contribution (because nibbling on M&M's and candy canes doesn't count) to this whole project was the little chimney made out of red M&M's.

We wanted the roof to be good and dry before we added shingles, so Thursday night was Andes mint shingles night! Brett also plucked the fences right off the Silpat and secured them to the base with royal icing. He added some finishing touches and just barely had enough icing.

I've made a video of some of the process and included some of the still photos that I took before I remembered we have a video camera. We got a free Flip video camera for paying our cable bill on time two months in a row! I actually really like it, so you may see more videos popping up on the blog... if there's something interesting enough to video. Enjoy!