sept.

After a hectic holiday season, I finally have some time to myself...aka I can finally write a new blog post. Like a lot of families I know, the holidays at my house consist of lots and lots of baking. I think I was probably around 5 when I started helping my mom "stir up" the christmas cookies. Needless to say, I am still baking up a storm thirteen Christmases later.

A classic Christmas tradition for many is the gingerbread house. Covered in white frosting, bedazzled with gum drops and other colorful candy, what's not to love? Although the gingerbread house is a holiday staple for many, I personally had only ever made one before this year. I've been wanting to make one for a few years now, and I decided that this would be the year. Safeway and Target (other stores too) sell boxed gingerbread house kits, which are great if you are in a time crunch, but I opted for 100% homemade. I had such a fun time constructing these houses with my family...definitely will be continuing the tradition for years to come!

These cute little houses are adorable, but make sure you set aside a good chunk of time ( I suggest making the gingerbread pieces a day before decorating) to make these fun treats. 

I started by making a basic gingerbread dough recipe. The recipe is shown at the bottom of this post.

After combining all of the fairly simple ingredients, you are left with a delicious and fragrant dough. I separated the dough into two round disks, wrapped them in sticky wrap, and refrigerated them until each disk became firm. 

After the dough was ready, I pulled it out of the fridge and popped it right onto a floured surface to be rolled out. 

As shown in one of the pictures above, I cut the dough into different pieces for the houses. I actually found a great website that provided links to printable patterns for gingerbread houses. I will also link this site below as it is very helpful to have patterns for each piece. 

After I had cut out all of the necessary parts for the houses, (I was making three, so I tripled the recipe!) I baked the cookies until they were nice and hard. It is helpful for the cookies to be harder than a regular cookie seeing as though you need to use the pieces to make a solid structure. The harder, the better! 

I ended up storing my cookie pieces in a sealed container for a couple of days before my family members arrived in town. They stored very well and were perfect when we wanted to start building! 

Right before we embarked on our gingerbread house-making adventure, I whipped up a batch of royal icing ( a very strong and sticky icing). Royal icing is VERY easy to make, it is basically a combination of egg whites and powdered sugar. I had a few of my family members volunteer to help hold up the pieces of the gingerbread so that I could pipe the frosting on, glueing the houses together. The royal icing was a success, it set quickly and the houses were stable and ready for decoration. 

Our gingerbread house-making experience quickly turned into a competition to see who could create the craziest house. My sister and I partnered up and here is what our house turned into after lots of fun, creativity, and candy!! 

I think that this new holiday tradition is a great one that any family can experience. I know I had fun and my family is all talking about doing it again next year! 

Here are the links for the house patterns:

Roof- http://www.simplyrecipes.com/photos/gingerbread-pattern-roof.gif

Side and Chimney- http://www.simplyrecipes.com/photos/gingerbread-pattern-side.gif

Front and Back- http://www.simplyrecipes.com/photos/gingerbread-pattern-front-b.gif

And here is the recipe for the gingerbread I used:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gingerbread-house-recipe/index.html#!