Daring Bakers! December Challenge!

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

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OK. I can't lie. I finished this one after the deadline. And am even later in posting about it! I don't make New Year's resolutions, but if I did, it would be to complete a Daring Bakers assignment more than a day in advance of the deadline! Perhaps in January... Anyways, whether late or on time, this one was a dud. At least for me.

Without further ado, a Gingerbread House. Or, sort of...

I used Y's recipe for Scandinavian Gingerbread, as I had all the ingredients (quite a feat considering I just moved into a new house and my kitchen is in shambles) but I didn't love the dough. Apparently a lot of bakers were finding the doughs too dry, and I'd have to agree. Also, the recipe recommended rolling the dough out on the baking sheet. Forget that! I tried that at first, and then just rolled it on the counter and moved it to the sheet.


The pieces baked up just fine, but then I faced the icing dilemma... As in, no mixer and no icing sugar and no meringue powder and no milk... the list goes on and on. I figured it didn't really need to be edible, just to be glue-like, so I tried to make an icing glue of sugar, eggnog, flour, cornstarch (yeah, I tried many thickening options) and perhaps other things during the desperate stage.


Mental note for future reference: Take photos of the whole thing before starting the detail shots. I was dealing with camera issues and taking close ups of the standing house, when all of a sudden the house was no longer standing. So, my glue icing wasn't quite as reliable as it could have been. I think the whole house only stood for five minutes. And then one wall stood alone for another five minutes.


All in all, I'd say the Gingerbread House failure was totally my fault, and not the recipes or instructions. You can only mess with recipes so much before things go wrong. Also, I wasn't really feeling this challenge, so I didn't exactly go out of my way to try and get it perfect.


From that stack of house pieces, I promise to try harder next month!

Happy baking!
- Carolyn