A House Made of Ginger

For all those red-headed bloggers, don’t worry, I've not been going round shaving the heads of gingers and turning the hair into some weird hairy-ginger houses. No, I got home from work and had an urge to create a classic Christmas treat completely from scratch. And then come to regret it three hours later when I was covered in flour and surrounded by never ending gingerbread biscuits, a bit like the Magic Porridge Pot but sweeter and not as sloppy.

Ignoring all the recipes online, and all the detailed instructions on how to put the house together, I searched my bookshelves and found ‘The Usborne Beginner’s Cookbook’ that used to be my bible when I was baking with my mum at aged 7. Their gingerbread biscuit recipe made 20 biscuits, so, being presumptuous, I doubled it, so I could make a huge house. However only having a small circular cake board, this soon changed.

After spending perhaps an hour kneading dough till my arms ached and I no longer cared about making a silly gingerbread house I realised I’d used the wrong sugar, and you could see little golden flecks in the dough. Deciding I really couldn't be bothered to make a whole new batch of dough, I discussed it with my dad and we decided it would give the house a nice ‘rendered’ look, or something along those lines. Then it was the good bit (after rolling out the dough to skinny sheets and throwing flour all over myself).

Designing the house. This combines three of my great loves – baking, designing houses (courtesy of The Sims) and maths. Yes, I am a geek. Embrace it. And buy me the Sims 4. Thanks. Anyway, I think I spent another hour drawing out designs, measuring them, working out how they’d fit together, and drawing on all of my maths A Level trying to work out the hypotenuse of the roof angle (quite impressed at how professional I sound here). After extensively sketching out all the pieces I needed, I washed one of my rulers and painstakingly cut them out of my dough. Screwing up a lot and starting again, covering myself, and the kitchen, in more and more flour every time.

As you might have guessed from the Magic Porridge Pot reference, I had wayy too much dough left after this. So I made gingerbread biscuits. And lots of them. Fortunately for me a guy was round fixing our internet and standing on top of the oven, which made it so much easier to keeping taking in and out and turning my biscuits, So much easier. And hardly any of them were overcooked and hard. At all.

Tra la la la la, let’s move on. It was time to assemble my house. Using egg whites to make my icing nice and sticky I threw my house together wall by wall, using my mum as a prop. Unfortunately as soon as we put the roof on it started to slip fall apart. The idea was to hold it still until the icing set, holding it all together. However my dad came round the corner telling us it was all put up wrong, and we needed to use supporting walls (he’s a surveyor, he can’t help it). So while he worked out how to make my higgledy-piggledy ginger-mess into a structurally sound gingerbread house, I took a break and decorated my dog for Christmas. She loved it.

Everyone who makes a gingerbread house needs a surveyor on hand, it stayed up! Five hours of baking and it still wasn’t finished! The next day I spent another five hours smothering my house in buttercream icing, dotting on jelly tots, scattering marshmallows and crushed meringues on the roof – snow of course, and after eating most of a box of chocolate fingers I used a few of them as timbers and windows. Taa Daaah! It was finished.

As for the 40, yes I made 40, gingerbread biscuits I had left over, I turned them into the base for a ginger and honey cheesecake which was much yummier and less chewy than bog standard ginger biscuits.

Please don’t try this at home if you don’t have time, patience and a Christmas dog to amuse you. Or alternatively you could go to Costco and buy yourself a gingerbread house kit and cut this process down by, ooo about 9 hours. It won’t be as satisfying though.

Merry Christmas! xxx  

CRAVING ALERT!

If you're a cheese lover you need to try these miniature wheels of cheese from the Sainsbury's cheese counter. Keeping with the Christmassy-theme they'd be great on crackers, but to be honest I'd eat them on everything from pasta to toast to cereal. Well maybe cereals a bit silly, but my point is, buy them, they are DELICIOUS!


















http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/fine-follicles/Content?oid=3199086

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW86VVnINHA

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/book/1~C~CCBC~2466/beginners-cookbook.aspx

http://www.thesims.com/

https://www.philadelphia.co.uk/Recipes?search=cheesecake

http://www.costco.co.uk/view/product/uk_catalog/cos_6,cos_6.2,cos_6.2.8/84814