Years ago, I bought a book for Sydney called "It's A Gingerbread House." It is the story of a few kids who receive a gingerbread house from their Grandpa during the holidays. They nibble at the house, eventually eating the roof and discovering a letter inside with instructions for making their own house. The book goes on with recipes and detailed instructions for creating your own gingerbread house.
For many years, I have been reading this story to Sydney and Keira and anticipating the time when we would be able to make one together. We have done the graham cracker houses before but, if you know me, then you know that I like to do some things from scratch. Just to make it more difficult I suppose.
I decided to split this job into several nights. On the first night, Sydney and Keira helped me mix the ingredients for the dough. I shaped the dough into two thin bricks, wrapped them in wax paper, and let them rest. Sydney then helped me trace the patterns from the book onto sheets of paperboard and cut out the patterns.
After the dough had rested, it was ready to roll out, cut using our patterns, and bake. After baking, it was time to call it a night. The second night was dedicated to making the icing used to glue the house together and assembling the house.
The third night was the most fun for the girls as it was the night that we got to decorate the house. We had several different kinds of candy and nuts for building materials. We have had fun over the last week picking these snacks off the house.
Overall, I was really happy with the way the gingerbread house turned out. I baked the pieces a little too long, rendering the walls and roof of the house inedible. I would estimate the total time to create this one-room shack was about six hours. Next year I think we'll try a new pattern, maybe making a gingerbread castle instead!
