For the 20th or so year in a row we made our annual gingerbread house. If you have not seen earlier versions they are housed here: Gingerbread Houses
This year Adam, our chief designer, created an entirely new design which is pictured below. The design was about 50% larger than past models (luckily we do it on a 4′ x 4′ piece of plywood) and was quite intricate. The intricacies caused some structure issues which you will see below. All in all, it was still a fun experience but we were extremely exhausted even though we decided to start the house on the Saturday and Sunday before Xmas and finish it on Xmas eve (which then turned into Xmas Day). This decision to start four days earlier than usual turned out to have some problems since it was very moist in Oceanside and the pieces did not hold their baked firmness and some cracked, too. BUT, we managed to make the best of all of it and I think that the result is inspiring and next year we have copious notes on how to make it even better.
Here is a photo of the house, as it was designed, with the plans for the various pieces and the final house pictured below.
The house is, as you can see, quite beautiful and if you have ever made a gingerbread house you may realize that it is not the easiest house to build given its many roofs and windows.
Here are the plans. Note that the piece in the top row in the middle has notches. This is because it was too big to put in the oven whole and had to be assembled after the fact. This turned out to cause some problems since the piece never quite held its shape, bowing inward.
This year’s cast of characters included, of course, Larry, Adam, Arielle, Chris and Kaylee, plus Arie’s girlfriend Katherine, Adam’s girlfriend Farris and her daughter Jacqueline, Kaylee’s friend Blaire and Vicki was there for support and encouragement (and oohs and aahs). Oh yes, and Chris’ girlfriend Ceili watched and encouraged via Skype from Paris where she is an au pair.
I think Ceili was getting into the Xmas spirit here by eating a round candy cane or maybe she was trying to create something for the house next year. We shall see.
Here I am, the night before, started to bake the dough. This year Chris made the batter which is basically very stiff, dry gingerbread. You have to chill it and then take it out and roll it on the back of a baking pan. Seems simple but rolling out very cold dough takes effort. You have to roll one way a bit and then the other, all the while trying to make sure that you are keeping it about 1/4th inch thick all the way around.
Here are the balls of dough in the frig along with eggs to make the glue. The glue itself is a pound of powdered sugar, three egg whites and a tsp of cream of tartar. You have to beat it for 10 minutes to get it really thick and gooey so it dries quickly.
This is part of the back wall. I have rolled out the dough and now am cutting out the outline and windows.
Here is the piece that I just cut out in the oven. Note that it has expanded a bit, particularly the top windows so Adam will need to dremel it out.
This is what happened to us a lot this year. The gingerbread would cook and then crack so we had to bake it again (and again in some cases). For some cracked pieces we simply put glue in the cracks in hopes that it would stay together (which sometimes worked).
Got a bit hungry, so I tried to eat a piece of gingerbread but it is not exactly tasty since it is mostly flour and hard as a rock.
Adam just loves the dremel and this year I had all sorts of cool attachments that my friend Bob got me along with this new dremel. Here he is dremeling out the windows on the piece shown above in the oven.
The pieces are all laid out and ready to go.
Here Adam is explaining exactly how the walls need to be built up.
Arie is holding up the huge wall. This is one of the pieces that was too large to bake so it is in two pieces and the gingerbread piece in the middle is holding those two pieces together.
More walls being set up …
… and held up. Adam is gluing the bottoms to the board covered with foil.
The walls are all up. Note that the whole board is covered with foil. Later on we glued green coconut to most of the “yard” and added a driveway in front.
Kaylee and Blaire are molding wonderful things to go inside the house. Note the massive amount of candy available.
Farris is watching Jacqueline make a car for the driveway.
Chris is working on a coffee table to go in the dining room. He is using pretzels (the square ones with holes) and filling them with the icing.
Not sure what Katherine is making here but you can see the intensity on her face.
Jacqueline clearly had a great time. She worked harder and longer than anyone else and here she is enjoying a moment of the “blues” with icing on her fingers.
Arie and Kaylee are making things. Arie has a woven throw to put over the living room couch or love seat to keep the people warm on the cold cold nights.
Every year in the past we have taken a piece of waxed paper and formed it into a cone and covered it with icing and ornaments. Technically this was cheating since everything is supposed to be edible. This year Arie challenged Adam to make his tree out of gingerbread. We baked a series of circles getting smaller and smaller and Adam stacked and glued them.
Then he iced the whole thing green.
We made good use of canned goods to hold and stabilize some of the pieces. Here the tree is drying on a can of olives.
And … ta da … the finished tree with ornaments (thank you to Jacqueline and Arielle), candy canes (Adam) and even a train running around the tree courtesy of Chris. Everyone made the packages.
This is an overview of part of the house. You can see the couch and love seat are occupied with the lady on the love seat using the throw. There is a coffee table, a rug in front of the fireplace and some other items that you will see in more detail later.
This is the bed (again, thanks to Jacqueline) with a teddy bear (Kaylee) and even a laptop computer by Adam who always makes the computer. Who in their right mind uses a computer in bed? Oh, yeh, Vicki and I do. Note the cute kitty popping its head out from under the bed. Thanks to Arie for that one.
Here’s a wall hanging courtesy of Chris. My understanding is that TPRTE started when someone typo’d TORTE on his social network called Cardboardia. Above the word is a cardboard box which is the Cardboardia symbol.
Here is a better picture of the wall hanging and its position over the bed.
I am hard at work on my second annual garden. The outside of the raised bed is made of long, thick pretzels.
The garden has a trellis with climbing beans (the trellis is made from a single piece of baked gingerbread which collapsed later on when the hammock was strung between it and the swing set). The “dirt” is brown coconut. We had a heck of a time making brown coloring. For some reason it would come out tan or black or an awful dark, avocado green. The garden itself features a row of cabbage, another of pumpkins, and a third with carrots peeking out of the ground. Most of these were Adam’s creations with help from Farris. In the back left there is a sign letting everyone know that it is indeed a garden (Jacqueline made the sign and Farris did the lettering). In the front left is a curled hose.
Here is a close-up of the garden detail. The cabbage and pumpkins almost look real!
Jacqueline’s garden sign is quite nice.
Here is a first attempt at the trellis using pretzels. As soon as I picked it up it fell apart which is why the trellis is made from gingerbread.
The obligatory snowman (although there is no snow on the ground!) was made by Chris using marshmallows and some miscellaneous stuff.
Here are lots of the pieces ready to go in the house. From the upper left clockwise are the jacuzzi bench, a frosted cake a footstool, the hammock with two presents in front and a colorful rug. The teddy bear for the bed is next and lots of leaves. In the middle below the footstool are some plants which ended up outside the back door.
Arie is showing some of the smooshed tootsie rolls. This year we had a great time deciding where to put the tootsie rolls to warm them up so that they were pliable. The consensus was that sitting on them worked the best although Adam claimed that putting them in his pocket was better.
Adam is making the stove, using black glue in a tube that he found in his house. The frosting tube is really old and was used by his great grandmother whose house he bought. The sink has blue water from those cake icing tubes and a faucet set made from pretzel parts.
Blaire made these people. Aren’t they amazing? They are depictions of her, Kaylee and Jacqueline.
Adam is setting up the swing set. He use pretzels and strapped the pieces with rolls of sour, gummy candy rolls. Note the attempt at brown glue. This time it came out sort of tan.
Again, cans came in handy, holding up the swing set with the help of a couple of pieces of gingerbread for support.
Here is the final swing set, complete with two swings suspended by strings of candy. Note the hammock to the left which is hooked to the trellis and caused the trellis to collapse.
Here is the finished stove, oven, sink and refrigerator. Adam outdid himself with the details. A cake is sitting on top of the frig, probably to discourage anyone from eating it! Note by the way that the refrigerator is avocado green. A throw-back from the 1950s.
Here are an assortment of house items. including Santa’s bag, some wall hangings (including Chris’ TPRTE which I believe comes from a misspelling of TORTE), two rugs, the computer, the kitty cat and the Xmas tree train.
Kaylee is weaving a rug.
Here is a somewhat fuzzy photo of the couch and love seat which were made by Chris.
Outside the back door there was a path leading to the jacuzzi. The steps are jelly candy and the bench is gingerbread with jelly candy for the seats. At the top you can see part of a “slip-n-slide.”
Here is a picture of the whole slip-n-slide complete with hose (not the pretzel hose bib at the far left) and the man sliding down the wet slide.
Here is a close-up of the slip-n-slide. The ramp was mine but the guy in his trunks was made by Katherine.
Adam’s tree was a major undertaking. I tried some ideas and none worked. He finally figured out that he could make a base with gingerbread disks glued together and coated with brown (tan?) icing and then use pretzels as the branches. Since it is the fall, a few colorful leaves remain on the tree (thanks Farris for the detailed work) and a bunch on the ground.
Here’s the detail on Farris’ leaves.
Adam is working hard on gluing the tiny leaves to the tree.
Before the roof could go on Adam placed the inside parts where they would end up.
Jacqueline made this car, named Ginger 1, out of gingerbread and jelly candy.
Vicki and Arie posing for a picture in front of the table of candy.
Adam and Larry are working on trees and the walkway from the house to the jacuzzi.
A teeter totter with jump rope waiting for some kids to come out and play.
Arie and Farris took some time out to do a little dance. OK, back to work you two!
Adam is testing the roof pieces to see if they are going to fit – which they didn’t. Note the glue on the roof piece he is holding which is covering up the cracks.
Adam is putting glue on the top of each wall for the roof. Lots of glue is needed to keep the roof solid.
Arie is our designated holder and is holding up part of the roof while Adam applies more and more glue.
Everyone is looking at the roof and offering help.
View from the front. The driveway is made of dried lentils and dried green peas with red licorice lining the edges. The front part is grass (green coconut, of course) and there is a tiny mailbox with its flag up.
Here’s a close-up of the mailbox.
The table needed breakfast this year (we have always done dinner) and these plates have sunny side up eggs and bacon strips.
Kaylee made this wall hanging.
The inside of the house had two types of flooring. The pretzels formed a hardwood flooring for the living room and kitchen while the orange coconut made a shag carpet in the bedroom. The 1950s theme was continued with the avocado green refrigerator pictured earlier.
Here’s Santa sliding down the chimney. Blaire made this one. Santa’s bag of toys is below, next to the chimney. Interestingly, as often happens when you mold tootsie rolls into shapes, Santa actually did slide down the chimney and is currently stuck somewhere in the middle.
As he did last year, Adam made a pot of roses. The detail is amazing, particularly when you look at the next photo which gives some perspective.
Here’s the front porch and the roses again. If you look at the photo to the right you can really see how small the roses actually are in comparison to the whole house. Once again, the detail is unbelievable. There are two door mats, one outside on the front porch and the other just inside the door.
Aerial view of the house, roof and all. Again, you can see how tiny the roses are in comparison to the scale of the house.
Kaylee made this fishbowl on a stand.
Although the chimney is not yet complete, the fire is burning.
Here is a view of part of the living room with the fishbowl, love seat, woven rug in front of the back door, part of the coffee table, Chris’ wall hanging with RPI (the initials of his university), and some presents around the tree.
Here is a view of the other half of the living room. Presents, train, tree, rug to the left in front of the front door.
A wider view of the living room. The TV is on and proclaiming “OBAMA” (Katherine did this one) and a wall hanging by Kaylee that says “Ring the Bell” as an homage to her Yale residence hall Timothy Dwight’s cheer (you will have to ask her to do the cheer since it is filled with the most interesting words – I don’t recall my dorm cheer requiring bleeping).
An aerial view of part of the living room.
Here is the kitchen table from above. There are four plates with eggs, bacon and pancakes with two chairs. The table holds a small gingerbread house, too. I wanted Farris to also make another smaller gingerbread house to go inside that one and then another and so on but got a resounding “no way.”
Adam is taking a much deserved break. He and I stood most of the time and I for one am still paying for it with a sore, stiff back.
And finally, the goofy, end of the day photos.
Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah.
I thought that this comic (thanks to Chris for finding it) was particularly appropriate given the difficulties we had this year in creating a solid structure that would hold up. The high moisture content in the air immediately caused some problems which you can see below. Sigh … They never seem to last. If it’s not an earthquake it is the weather. “It’s always something” (for those of you who are SNL fans from the early days with Gilda Radner).
Almost immediately the roof with the skylights fell apart and all the pieces ended up in the living room. At least you can see the bed now!
Before five minutes had passed we heard a crash and the tree, and all of its leaves had fallen off the board and onto the floor. Maybe it was the victim of loggers.
As I said earlier, Santa is slowly sinking into the chimney.
Jacqueline’s car windshield collapsed.
The candy lines holding up the swings stretched until they now rest on the “grass.”
The trellis collapsed under the weight of the hammock which was strung from it to the swing set. Well, stay tuned for next year!
