There was a gingerbread house contest at work this week….
It might have been more epic, but I only had three days to prepare.
I used this recipe for the ginger bread: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gingerbread-house-recipe.html.
I’ve never made gingerbread before, so I followed the recipe pretty closely. I doubled the recipe, and I did bake for a few extra minutes, as one of the comments suggested (because I was more interested it structural integrity than possible over-baking). I also left out the ground cloves (because I didn’t have any).
The glue/mortar is all almond bark. The roof shingles are Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.
Things I learned:
- Chilling the dough too long makes it really hard to work with
- I mixed it one night and baked it the next. I had to use an ice cream scoop to get it out of the bowl, then work it for a while to get it flat on the cookie sheets.
- When designing the house, remember that gingerbread has depth
- It will not fit together the same you the card stock templates do
- Cinnamon Toast Crunch is more curvy than I realized, but it turned out to be a cool look. (I only bought the cereal because it had a minion toy in it…)
- Cinnamon Toast Crunch is delicious with almond bark
- Those M&M’s take forever to put on
- I should have cut windows and put an led tea light inside
- I thought of it as soon as I’d finished decorating
- The Howl’s Moving Castle movie is even closer to the book than I remembered when I first watched the movie (I was listening to the audio book while decorating)
My house did not place in the contest (top 3 got prizes). So I took it home and butchered it.
To be fair, there were some pretty cool entries:
Candy-Land got first place, followed by the football stadium, then the store. Personally, as impressed as I am by the Candy-Land display, I think they cheated by using graham crackers for the main house. And I think some of those decorations are non-edible.
More photos: https://goo.gl/photos/du8bQhFe8vqgd6my9
geekgirlmae 