Gingerbread Houses

Happy holidays and happy new year everybody! I've finally found a moment to breathe and have mostly recovered from the usual holiday madness. I'll have a post coming soon about all of the good eats on Christmas, but for now, you get to see houses.

First, a ridiculous house in my neighborhood. Festive, right? This place is completely covered in lights and plays cheesy music. I feel sorry for their neighbors...

But now, on to the gingerbread houses! Last year I helped Nicole decorate one, but this year we each decided to make our own houses. We were a little short on time, so we took several shortcuts on the gingerbread recipe (e.g., not chilling or resting the dough and not necessarily using the best or proper ingredients). It doesn't really have to be edible anyway, just strong. 

Nicole has the coolest mixer, btw. It's the Sunbeam Mixmaster, and I was amazed by it because it spins the bowl as it mixes. It deserves a photo :-)

Anyway, after mixing up the dough really quickly, we drafted some patterns for our houses and began cutting them out. Thank goodness Nicole had fancy drafting supplies! I was actually able to cut straight lines, and my house fit together. Here you'll notice Nicole's lovely hands cutting out her house.

The houses cooked and cooled for a while, at which point I actually left to eat dinner with my mom. Then, I returned for the best part - decorating!

At first I thought we'd be whipping up a batch of royal icing (and I was looking forward to using the Mixmaster again). However, there was no need for that because Nicole had already bought some really awful icing at Aldi. If you know what Aldi is like, you'll appreciate this icing. It was the perfect glue for our houses. In fact, it worked so well that you had to work incredibly fast to put things together before it dried. It's slightly disturbing to think what this may do to you if you actually consumed it. I'm not sure why Aldi is so horrible in the US. In Germany it was just a normal grocery store...

Our houses began coming together quite nicely. I really wanted to use nonpareils to tile my roof, but they were out at the store. Luckily Nicole had bought quite a few Necco Wafers that we both ended up using. We found that being surrounded by candy is dangerous. I couldn't stop eating Twizzlers, and Nicole kept inadvertently eating the Neccos only to realize how disgusting they are several times. 

I decided to try my hand at piping on the backs of our houses. We hadn't cut any windows and didn't know what to do, so I wrote Merry Christmas. It turned out better than I expected, given my crappy handwriting. But piping is definitely a skill I need to develop a bit more. I have some friends' birthdays coming up, so maybe I can hone my skills then :-)

Our finished houses ended up looking really cute. I love the coconut snow, and I was able to use the lovely glue icing to make icicles hanging from my roof.

Nicole's house had a really cute snowman made from marshmallows and coconut :-)

After finishing up, my gingerbread house had to survive the ride home (at least back to Adrian's parents' house). I was a little nervous about this to begin with, and then I ended up driving back in a sleet/ice storm. Thankfully, I survived and so did the house. Adrian's niece and nephew were obsessed with it for a little while and enjoyed poking it, looking at it, and wanted to know if they could smash it then eat it. Needless to say, I didn't recommend eating it, and they left after Christmas without remembering they wanted to smash it. Our car was too full to bring it back to our house, so I assume it is still looking pretty for Adrian's mom and dad.