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Gingerbread Houses - Pictures


maggie

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I see you huge wheel of blue cheese, but...isn't that a gigantic viper attacking an army man (or woman) in the corner. That's a scary house :huh: But besides the death and destruction, the house looks great - lot's of fun features!

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tim, your wife's work this year and last is amazing. Can you give us any hints as to her baking/design background or yours? My godson would flip over her "Thomas" display! Thanks for sharing her work with us.

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Anna,

No design background. Just a lot of passion and some frustrations with design resources. She freehanded the Thomas face. The toys, signs, mats and elves were sculpted by our daughter in law, she is very talented.

Five years ago, we began noticing architectural errors in the designs that were included with books on the subject. I tried to correct patterns that just didn't flow like a real house. At the same time, Lib began working on large houses with more realistic features. Kind of houses for adults with less candy and better detailing.

Two years ago, she began taking pics of real houses and ceramic model houses. I was enlisted to translate the pictures into templates. This year she did it on her own and did a better job than I could.

I still get called on for complex roof shapes and for sanding edges, mitering corners and reshaping panels.

I also do the internet search for materials. Gumpaste is a nightmare, the stuff from NY Cake does not harden. We are also having problems with shelf life on Isomalt. Nest year, pastillage.

The blue fondant with the authentic lead content was really hard to find. All the way from China....

Tim

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Juliachildish! I love your name or whatever they are called! I also love your house! I kept going back to look for the details that GFRON mentioned. I must learn to LOOK-if you know what I mean! I did notice the igloo and I think it is just lovely! This is such a lovely activity-to make these gingerbread houses!

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Here are a couple of pics of Patrick A's gingerbread Southwest village. He included about 10 buildings, including his great, great's family homestead. Here is a bakery (with activity inside) and a sugar lake.

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And some of his detail work - ristras.

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So Google had their cafes do a model gingerbread campus this year. I got stuck with two (my cafe and another buidling) with no gingerbread house experience whatsoever and kind of freaked out. But I think it turned out pretty nice for my first try... I forgot to cover up that one seam on the front. Bah!

Tim-- for that isomalt greenhouse, how did your wife cut out the pieces? or did she do big slabs of isomalt and just pipe on the metal grid supports?

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Edited by Pephemie (log)
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I love everyone's gingerbread masterpieces, lovely lovely.

My eyes' tummy is full and happy, <insert a contented little burp here>.

Umm, Tim, what about CK's gumpaste? It's a powder that you just add water to. Sets up quick, not a lot of play time, but it does set up. And lots of people like Nic Lodge's gum paste recipe. You can google it. I like it too, I'm just lazy. But either way you probably have to add your own lead--you're so funny!

Marzipan is a medium that you will want to consider incorporating for modeling too. Takes color like crazy, and makes wonderful sharp or soft edges, models great. What about a pasta machine? Even a hand crank one. Oooh can't wait for next year.

FWIW I was gonna do a gingerbread house of my church but the bookstore I just launched a month ago ate my brain and my time...next year though!

Pephemie, love everything and the trees! Those doors are the bomb. I think the fish should be swimming in towards the doors though. You've got them both swimming the same way. They're probably swimming into or out of the building no? :laugh:

Julia, I can just follow your head around your masterpiece, crazy good, wonderful work.

Rob & Patrick A, Wowzereenos, Guys, far beyond fantastically amazing several times over, then squared.

I need to go smell the gingerbread dough in the frige...

Edited by K8memphis (log)
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Tim-- for that isomalt greenhouse, how did your wife cut out the pieces? or did she do big slabs of isomalt and just pipe on the metal grid supports?

Hi,

For your first house, you hit a home run. That is really a beautiful job. Let me ask how you attached the gelatin sheets to the gingerbread, that can be a little frustrating.

The isomalt greenhouse was made by pouring the two side pieces and shaping them to match. Then after remeasuring, a rectangle was poured for the front. After the isomalt cools a bit, the lines are scored with a knife and the from sheet was rolled over a rolling pin to the appropriate curve. The fondant framing was affixed after the greenhouse was put up.

K8, What is CK's???

Tim

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K8, What is CK's???

Tim

I think it stands for Country Kitchens but they make a bunch of cake deco products. Here it is. It's the last product on the left on the bottom of the page.

You can purchase this at a lot of different cake deco places. But my buddy Brian owns this one. If you decide to trade there tell him I said hey.

http://www.shopbakersnook.com/201.html

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I can't let this thread pass without posting a photo of the world's largest gingerbread house that stood over the holidays last year at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN.

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Edited by Davydd (log)

Davydd

It is just an Anglicized Welsh spelling for David to celebrate my English/Welsh ancestry. The Welsh have no "v" in their alphabet or it would be spelled Dafydd.

I must warn you. My passion is the Breaded Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

Now blogging: Pork Tenderloin Sandwich Blog

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Just a simple gingerbread house I made for my husband's office. I made the mistake of making one on a whim last year (my first time making a gingerbread house) and they asked for one this year...darn it. I'm also very lazy, so I didn't do too much detail work. Maybe next year I'll do better.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I'm sure by now no one is interested in gingerbread houses any more, well, too bad! My sister and I worked on the basics of the house together - basically the walls- but she had to go back to her college town so I was stuck with the decorating. We had planned on making a cut-away second floor but we underbaked it and when we stuck it back in the oven to firm it up we blackened it! Well it certainly was hard then, but I didn't think we wanted to live in a smoky house. I should preface that I have a large family, and the cookie people below are only my mother, stepfather, two brothers, stepbrother, sister, and step sister. At least it makes the cookie decorating interesting!

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My sister is outside with her law book and comic.

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Inside are my step father in the construction shirt, two brothers, stepbrother, and me! Though I swear that looks nothing like me in real life. We are all holding video game controllers. Our two cats, Xena and PJ are in the background.

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Here you can see I went so far as to ice a tv onto the wall (surely a flatscreen, haha). I also stuck a christmas tree in the corner and our cats on top of and next to our fish tank. Also note table with festive settings and a (christmas?) cake.

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Our gingerbread house reminded me of a log cabin from Little House in the Woods because it was one-room and had visible cementing icing on the insides. Needless to say we did not all fit into the all-purpose room so my step sister became Santa (she loves christmas the most of any of us I think).

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Side view, we had some funny cookie cutters so I took our yard back to the Jurassic era. One of my favorite things about this house was the bright colors our food dyes made in our royal icing.

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My mom on the other side of the house with her yarn and needles. Please note also the Seussical tilting chimney.

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Last but not least, the peppermint roof and a ninja!?! Yeah, I'm pretty silly. I also liked the flowers. We used some Japanese vegetable cutters (do these have a name?) to make these. I think they are used to cut up carrots and such but we used them in a sweeter application :)

Thanks for reading this egotistically long post!

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Brontosuarus meet JuliaChildish's COBRA!  You people make scary gingerbread worlds...I'd have to carry a gingerbread gun.  Good job on all of that - I love the details on the people.

Thanks, I enjoyed decorating the people most of all. I think the gingerbread house is a particularly good medium for individualization, at least among desserts! We actually have a whole box of dinosaur cookie cutters that look like they were made in the 50's. :blink:

Underfoot, I adore your gingerbread house! I really need to make the time to do more cookie cutouts next year-you've given me so many ideas! I think we both share an affinity for rather "special" gingerbread houses...

I do indeed enjoy "special" gingerbread houses! Although I don't know what your proclivity stems from, I'm sure mine is some deep seated desire to stand out from all the other perfect houses that I know I could never replicate (Like the ones on this thread!). Plus it's nice to give people a little humor and make it interesting to look at. I like yours too! Now if only I had some awesome plastic figures to stick on mine next year... Okay where did that Power Puff Girls figurine go?

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Christmas 2009

We made a gingerbread house that looked like OUR house.

The windows are crushed, melted butterscotch candy.

Inside is a string of Christmas lights so it looks great at night.

We still plan to put on a couple more finishing touches but couldn't wait to post photos on eG.

:)

Front of the house

Gingerbread - Front.jpg

Rear of the house

Gingerbread - Rear.jpg

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Tim,

I think the darker color comes from all the molasses in the recipe. The architecture is actually a replica of my own house.

Kendi,

I got the recipe from Martha Stewart. Click here.

Keep in mind that you can trim the pieces after they are baked. Don't worry about "perfection" while rolling & cutting. Do your finish work after it comes out of the oven. A big part of the fun is the decorating and accessorizing (ie. trees, pathway, etc). Keep the house simple and make the decorations fun!

  • Thanks 1
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