9100 Gingerbread House

This is the 6th house I made for work.  I work with leukemia patients at Duke University Medical Center, and many can't go home for the holidays.  This is what Mom always did for us for Christmas, and this is still a big symbol of the holidays for me.  I have many fond childhood memories helping her (probably usually getting in her way.)  I only use edible ingredients as Mom always thought it cheating that one of her neighbours took a cardboard box and used icing to glue candy to it.

The fondant figurines are something I learned to do from The Sugar Lane, by Donna Lane.  This is the third year I've played with those.  I like what I'm doing, but she is a genius and very generous with her knowledge.

The windows were something new for me - I tried to melt my own sugar to hardball stage and then poured it in cut openings.  I found the harder I boiled the sugar, the more difficult it was to see through and the house design didn't let much light pass through anyway.  Also, where the icing touched the sugar the sugar started to drip brown liquid caramel.  It really started to look gross to me, but no one else seemed to notice.  I've been told to use Karyo next year, and to take the mixture to 315 F instead of 300.  I'm thinking of using sugar cookie dough inside the holes cut in the gingerbread instead as I can colour it and make a better contrast between the gingerbread dough.  I haven't done it yet, and if anyone knows of any pitfalls, please let me know up front.  I had used lollipops that were crushed in the past, but there was a huge amount of work and the only colour that really worked was the yellow - everything else didn't let enough light through.  Making the roof design to let light pass through the house is also a huge amount of work for little obvious result.

I was able to do a fun shaped roof because I use a number of extra triangle pieces and glue them together one day before I do the rest.  I also twice bake the gingerbread to make it extra hard.  Here's one shot of where I stopped working and let the icing dry overnight.  You can see the caramel that was poured in before the pieces were joined.  With the triangle pieces on the bottom, I don't have to work as hard to balance a wall for further joining.  I use a fine cheese grater on the gingerbread to "sand" the joining surfaces.  I just need to make sure the extra pieces are dried on well before I proceed.  I use several small pieces on an ackward join.

  This second pic is just to show some other pieces that went inside to support the roof.  The center post was two twice baked strips that were glued together the night before, and it was set on pieces used to join the walls.

Every year I play with a couple new techniques, and these were the techniques I focused on this year.