Gingerbread House

In an earlier blog, I had mentioned that I was going to build a Gingerbread House for Christmas. It took me two gruelling days during the holidays but I managed to pull through and construct an amazing 'humble' abode.
I had made one for Christmas 2008, but this time I was aiming even higher. I wanted a bigger, better and brighter house! So I made a much larger template for the walls and roof, used way more sweets, and for the 'cement' (keeping all the walls together) I used a concoction of egg white and icing sugar instead of your normal icing sugar and water mix.

Off course it wouldn't have been right if something didn't manage to go wrong. It begin as I was trying to patiently stick the walls and roof together. I had to pipe some of the 'cement' onto one wall at a time but found that I could use glass tumblers to keep the walls upright until they dried. So after doing this four times and using 8 large glasses( one on each side of the walls), I moved on to tackle the roof. Half an hour later, I had managed to stick the 2 remaining slabs of gingerbread biscuit onto the top, leading to the completion of the foundations of my house.

As I sank into the kitchen chair, admiring my house, I moved the board it had been assembled on to see what it looked like from all angles. "This seems really heavy" I thought, I suddenly looked through the space of the little door and could see something reflecting back at me. I realised that I had forgotten about the support system. I had stupidly managed to 'brick' in 4 large and heavy glasses!
I had come too far to give up now (after spending about 6 hours, making the dough, rolling it out, baking the biscuits and assembling all the pieces). I simply had to remove the roof and get the glasses out of my house and then just glue it back together, and that's what I did. Finally I was able to sit down and relax thinking that tomorrow my artistic skills would be put to test as I decorated the outside of the house.

I can proudly say that this year's house was better than last year's, and although it was sad to have to demolish it ( on the day that I left home to go back to England) the joy of eating the walls and roof made it all worth it!