Gingerbread House Fun

When I was a kid my parents always bought a gingerbread house and put it together for Christmas. My sister and I would decorate it. For some years we even had two houses so we could decorate one each. Then we became older and one year we didn't have a gingerbread house. I think it was in 2010. I missed it, and the next year I decided to take matters into my own hands. No store bought, flat packed house this year. I was going to build my own gingerbread castle!

I found a recipe for gingerbread in one of my many cook books and made the dough. I cut out the shape I wanted and was very satisfied with myself. Turned out I hadn't quite mastered the art of rolling the dough flat enough, so the pieces turned out fat as well as huge.

Because of the big pieces it was actually easier to put together. It looked horrific and clumsy, but I decorated it with lots of icing and colourful non stops. We put it in its customary spot in the living room with accompanying decorations, and in the end I was quite pleased with the result.

The next year I also wanted to make my own house but I couldn't think of anything cool to make so I went with a pattern I copied of my cook book. It was of a church.

Again I didn't roll the dough thin enough. I also did not manage to cut the pieces exactly like the pattern. The pieces didn't quite fit together, creating this monster:

I added an actual bell to the bell tower to make it a little more interesting.

You can cover up a lot of lopsidedness with enough decoration. Even though the house looked like it was made by a child I ended up loving it.

This year I got home so late I didn't have the time to make my own house from scratch. I had told my mother to by a kit I could put together and decorate when I got home. She bought a church, quite similar to the one I made last year.

When I opened the package it was chaos. It looked like someone in the store had thrown it on the ground and stepped on it. All the pieces had at least one fracture.

Some pieces were fractured into so many pieces I didn't bother to glue the tiniest bits together. As a result some pieces had holes in them.

I ended up liking the result, it looked like a earthquake had gone off fracturing the walls, making it all lopsided and about to fall apart.

A lot of it was covered up in icing and non stop, so in the end only the fractured tower roof and the hole in the ceiling and back wall were visible.

And with the usual decorations the earthquake church is quite charming in my opinion.

I consider myself quite competent when it comes to cooking and baking, but my gingerbread houses so far aren't very pretty. But then again, the fact that they look so home made is what makes me love them.

I wish you all the best of luck with your own, future gingerbread creations!