Adventures with Gingerbread

Last Sunday, Erica and Jenni helped me bake gingerbread cookies for the Japan Trip Craft/Bake Sale which takes place the next day. With the recipe taped on a kitchen cupboard, I handled the wet ingredients listed in the recipe and Jenni took over the dry ingredients. Halfway between mixing and stirring, Jenni discovered that there was not enough flour at Erica's place. We looked at each other and then at the pouring rain out the window. Erica got her slippers dirty and I got my socks wet, but we didn't let that stop us. xD We walked back to my place to get more flour and continued on with our baking. :D

Baking is definitely a tricky process. The dough refused to cooperate with us. Erica's sister had warned us that because Hawaii's weather is slightly warmer than most places, the dough will be softer. I let Jenni do the rolling because I always get the dough stuck onto the pin. I don't know how she does it. @_@ I wish I had more patience! We made three batches of cookie dough - two for cookies and the other batch for making gingerbread houses. =) We kept rotating them and putting them into the refrigerator in hopes that the dough would harden. Chilling the dough did not make too big a difference as it was still difficult to cut out the shapes, but we tried out best. After cutting out the shapes, Erica carefully transfered them onto the pan with a spatula. We decided to make gingerbread men, Christmas trees, and snowmen. :D I decorated the gingerbread men with m&m buttons and used a toothpick to make a face. Poking holes for the eyes and mouth was fun. =)



Cookies don't normally expand, do they? These did. There was no trace of those scrawny little gingerbread men we cut out - out of the oven, they're big guys. When they were baking in the oven, Erica peeked through the lit window and exclaimed that some cookies were sticking to each other. This worried me. But when we took the cookies out of the oven, we smiled at the sight of gingerbread men holding hands. <3

"Aww, they're friends!"

One batch of cookies came out a honey-golden-brown color. The other batch was a darker shade of brown. Erica worried that we burnt them. I joked that we could still sell the burnt cookies by saying that we added cocoa powder to that batch. XD But they tasted alright~

Jenni was evidently very enthusiastic about making gingerbread houses because she brought lots of candy to decorate them. I did not have any candy at my place so I brought mixed nuts (cashews, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, you name it) and animal crackers. ^^;;; I haven't made gingerbread houses since elementary school. I used to make them using milk cartons, graham crackers, frosting, and gummy bears. Reminiscing triggered something in my mind. A sudden realization hit me!

Everyone I know uses graham crackers to construct their houses and I have never seen anyone use real gingerbread. @_@; But I guess the name works better. Graham cracker house doesn't sound as pretty.

We were all pretty excited to be making our first gingerbread house from scratch and with real gingerbread. I happily thought to myself, "These will be genuine gingerbread houses, not fake ones!"



Making gingerbread houses from scratch is no doubt a difficult task. It is no wonder people used graham crackers - they are easy, convenient, and uniformly shaped. We had to cut out dough with a knife to make the rounded corners straight. My gingerbread house kept falling down. The trick is to be persistent...and to stick it into the freezer before it falls on you again.


Presenting the gingerbread house before it goes into the freezer.

(I only notice now that one side of the roof was lopsided. Oh well.) The frosting hardened pretty quick and I was eager to start the decorating~! I started by slithering frosting on the gingerbread and sticking snow caps onto the roof.


Me & Erica's gingerbread house (left) and Jenni's (right).

Jenni decorated the top of her roof with peppermint kisses and used cereal to create the look of a tiled roof (she loved the idea after seeing it in a Martha Stewart magazine). I wanted to give my house color and variety so all four sides were decorated differently. Erica helped me decorate one wall with a variety of nuts (Jenni commented on how they looked like bricks), another wall with a candy cane, the third side with red & green gum drops, and the fourth side with peppermint kisses.


Isn't it pretty?

I propped a "reindeer" on top of the house for a finishing touch. (In actuality, I have no clue what animal it is but it passes for being a reindeer. ^.~)


Finished product!