In the past my workplace has hosted departmental gingerbread house decorating contests around the holidays, but this year, no one has been in the office in several months. So instead they sent the gingerbread kits home to us. The rules stipulate that anyone in our households could help, but only edible elements could be used in construction.
The main structure of the houses were already assembled and cured with rock-hard royal icing, so there was limited ability to deviate from the salt-box design. I therefore chose to construct a medieval cottage because it suited the foundation, but the modifications would fit my aesthetic and holiday themes.
This was a multi-phase build, taking several nights to let the structural kit-kats adhere in batches. Night one was a long one; Jake measured and cut the dormer, out house, and dog house while I built the chimney and applied the first layers of icing to build-out the top floor. Jake also made me sugar-glass windows inside graham cracker forms, which I then installed under icing and kit-kat beams.
I chose to go with a “living roof” out of piped green icing and flax seed for both color and texture. Flax seed also makes for nice ground. Jake constructed the side yard out of cardboard and wrapping paper, which I then covered in a home-made icing. The finishing touch is the little burnt-jelly bean dog poops, lower left in the photo above.
Jake says the dog is a corgi, made from carved marshmallow and crumbs. I assembled the dog house and dipped the sides in flax and sprinkles, and cut the dog bone decor out of white chocolate.
The garden is made up of various candies that came with the gingerbread kit. Mostly jelly-beans and icing, and hard-candies for stepping stones. I made wreaths from a ring of sprinkles on hard candy, and flower-boxes from cut vanilla wafers topped with sprinkles. Never underestimate the value of a good exacto-blade in crafting. It made cutting fragile cookies that much easier.
We didn’t forget about the back of the house either; finished to the same degree as the other three sides. It’s less busy, and clearly the rear, however, no garden is complete without a little stash of tools and miscellaneous plants hiding in back when you don’t know where else to put them. At the time of this writing, I don’t know whether we’ve won the gingerbread contest, but I’m hopeful. If not, I’ll be disappointed, but we had a nice time decorating either way.
