There’s a video produced by Tasty from several years ago featuring making gingerbread houses. I watch it every year because I enjoy their videos and the Christmas music makes my heart happy. After a mixed-success of making my own last year, I decided to attempt a family-activity of making confectionary constructions.
I have a few memories of making gingerbread houses from when I was pretty young. And by that I mean that my mom was actually baking gingerbread. I like to bake, and I thought this would be a thing I could try. My wife at some point told me I had impressed her with my effort (that’s another thing that makes my heart happy).
Planning for a family activity, I had to double the recipe that Tasty provided. I forgot the salt, mixed the sugar in at that wrong step, and the baking soda at the end instead of with the dry ingredients. If this were some other baked good, it’d probably have been worth starting over. I think of gingerbread as pretty unpalatable, and if you are actually eating off your construction, the gingerbread is the very last thing that gets eaten.
I used a template I found online. I have to admit that it seemed to come out quite a bit larger than I expected, even though the individual pieces seemed small. I had the presence of mind to not use a plate this year, but instead cover a piece of cardboard in foil. This made a nice lightweight base to work with, and more importantly, a flat base. In retrospect, I wish I would have oriented the front door toward the long side so I could make a proper front yard.
I’m pleased that my icing really held up. I made a large batch, and the initial stuff was really thick. I thinned it out for decorative, but then it was awfully runny.
The chimney was an off-the-cuff thought while I was cutting the pieces out. It turned out pretty well I think – though I only made one. About half way through my house, I managed to convince my son to come in and look. Once he saw what was going on, his enthusiasm went way up, and he wanted to make his own.
With the exception of a simple assembly last year, this was the first time in a long time that I have actually made one of these. It was fun to talk to my kid about how we’d do things, and what ideas we had for decorating.
One of the things I struggle with when I’m doing something is “What utility does this have?” I don’t know if it’s the result of living in late-stage-capitalism, or a quirk of my brain overvaluing efficiencies. I sometimes have to remind myself that the projects that I’m working on don’t need to justify themselves. I can make them just because I want to. Likewise, this Gingerbread house doesn’t need to taste good. It doesn’t need to win an award. It doesn’t need to be anything other than something that I did that I enjoyed. For that – mission accomplished.