Christmastime brings about gingerbread houses galore. There are kits in grocery stores, there are competitions, there are days at home spent constructing the houses only to be devoured shortly after.
And then there's me.
I never was one for gingerbread houses. Or gingerbread men, for that matter. I never liked the icing. I never liked ginger. Sure, I might have had fun decorating them as a kid (the men, not the houses; the houses frustrated me) but I never did eat them. I was also a kid who did not like the marshmallows in Lucky Charms. I would pick out the marshmallows and eat only the cereal.
So you can understand why I was less than enthusiastic about this month's Daring Baker's challenge. Gingerbread houses? Are you kidding me? Gross. But I carried on and figured I'd do it later. Ha. I didn't remember about it until Friday. Yeah. So Saturday, I scaled down the recipe. Replaced the ginger with cinnamon. Made the dough. And then forgot about it until eight o' clock tonight. Only because I saw the dough in the fridge when I was putting my salsa away.
I rolled out my dough. Cut some shapes. Enough shapes for two houses. Chilled them. Baked them. Cut them. Quickly threw together the given royal icing recipe. And then I assembled them. They stayed. Woo.... I guess. I just needed them to stay long enough for pictures to be taken. Then I thickened up the icing with more sugar to decorated the outside of the houses. I was in the middle of making a parchment paper cone when.... the first house crumpled into a heap of molasses-tasting rectangles. Molasses is gross, by the way. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't. I'd never used it before. I do now, though.
Anyway. So I randomly piped icing onto the house and took pictures. I really didn't care at all. It made the house cry. I wonder if it's crumpled yet...?
The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
I'd give you the recipe, but I'm lazy. And I don't want it anymore, so. Yeah.
