I love December. I love Christmas and all the holidays this month – especially my birthday (I’m sure that’s on your calendar, right?). I love decorating and hosting parties and giving gifts (and getting gifts). I love everything about this month. And, given how much I also love candy, you’d think I’d be all about gingerbread.
The truth is, though, that I’m too lazy – or too busy, or a little of both – to be bothere
d most years. That’s why I love the pre-made kits you can buy from Wilton and other specialty baking companies. The kits even come with candy, though in my experience supplementing is always necessary because you can never have enough variety of candy on your gingerbread house.
This year, I’ve also noticed a plethora of bake your own gingerbread kits - the step in between starting from scratch and buying a kit – and I’m thinking about giving it a whirl. I love the concept because it allows you to choose your end results more specifically and to select all your own candy without feeling wasteful. There’s an option available at Williams-Sonoma and I found another at my local Trader Joe’s.
Then again, maybe I’ll skip the whole gingerbread baking project and just make a graham cracker gingerbread house.
A couple years ago, the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN, widely known as the largest mall in America, took on the project of hosting the largest gingerbread house for the winter holidays. There it is in the picture, and as you can see, people are lining up to walk into. Yes, it was that big.
That’s pretty neat, right? Well, not so fast. Here’s the thing you may not have know about this giant gingerbread abode. Unlike the ones we make at home, this one had an internal metal frame. You can see the top of it, still under construction, in this photo.
Is that fair? Seems to me that this is a bit like cheating. What do you think?
Gingerbread House by jpellgen.
As you can tell, Rosa’s gingerbread house is in a pretty good area of town. Her gingerpeople residents made snowpeople decorations for the front yard and keep the place well-decorated and looking very nice. Go check out more of her pictures. When I lived in Worcester, MA, I lived in a neighborhood that looked a bit like this, except less tasty to eat:
Have you made a gingerbread house? Leave a link in the comments. We want to see the photos!
The nice thing about gingerbread houses is that you don’t need to be an architect to design them and they take up very little real estate to build one. Plus, there has never been a better time to own a gingerbread house than right now. Even in this economy we can all afford this sweet little treat mansion.
Do you like making these? Some families have a whole tradition of making them together. This is also a great activity for a party. My friend Jody used to add an element of friendly competition to her gingerbread house parties by dividing us into groups and having us try to build the most creative structure. The winners always got something fun as a prize and the competitiveness drove us to pull out all the stops. The “residents” of the houses were gummy bears and had to be featured somehow, and the houses did not have to make structural sense, as long as they could be held together with icing. It was great fun.
Send us a photo or a link to a picture of your gingerbread house and we will post it here. Here’s how we do it at NCA.
Gingerbread Recipe
Ingredients:
- 6 cups all purpose flour
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 2/3 cups shortening
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 eight-ounce container sour cream
- 2 eggs
Directions
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I know you thought that gingerbread houses were only for the more wintry holidays, but it certainly does feel like a transition in weather is upon us already. We thought it best to ease into winter slowly, so we put together a Halloween version of this classic craft. This has three components – recipes for the gingerbread and the icing and then assembly instructions.
Gingergread Recipe
Ingredients:
- 6 cups all purpose flour
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 2/3 cups shortening
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 eight-ounce container sour cream
- 2 eggs
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