Gingerbread Construction

After a late night at the office Christmas party on Thursday, Emilie took a longer-than-normal nap Friday afternoon. Housework was at a decent point so I decided to get started on our Gingerbread house. Yes, this year it is a house.

The past few years our ‘house’ had been a barn. It’ a lot of fun to do, but its big and takes some time. With two kids, one who is old enough to help, it was decided that we would downsize this year. Besides, I found a great set of Wilton Gingerbread House cookie cutters on our last trip to Boise and I really wanted to use them. So instead of a barn this year we are going with Gingerbread ‘cabin in the woods’.

The first step in building a gingerbread house is dough obviously. House dough is almost the same as gingerbread cookie dough but uses a lot more flour. The extra flour results in the dough becoming stiff and brick-like when cooked. Bad for snitching a sweet treat, great for sturdy walls and stiff roofs.

Jack loooooves to help in the kitchen. Adding flour, sugar, and other dry ingredients are his specialties. He also likes to stir. Also, there is no such thing as ‘neatly’ cooking with Jack. You have to expect a fine dusting of flour all over everything by the time you are done. It is NOT recommended to have him as an assistant if you are low on patience or in a hurry.

Anyway. So there we are in the kitchen. We’d gotten the dough finished and we were at the point where it needed to be wrapped in plastic wrap and chilled. I turned the dough out of the bowl onto the counter. It was sitting there like a big brown lump. I turned to get the plastic wrap out of the drawer when I hear him shout “Tractor Tracks!!!” I also hear a thud as he bounced off the chair in search on the nearest vehicle for making “tractor tracks”…turned out his excavator was closest.

For those not in the know. ‘Tractor tracks’ is what Jack does with Playdough. He loves to flatten it out and drive his tractors and assorted construction equipment across it to see what the tracks look like. I guess that big pile of dough seemed a good candidate for making tracks in. Since the house dough isn’t meant for eating and the Excavator had just been washed (I’d caught it digging trenches in his applesauce at lunch) I let him play a bit with the dough. Then we wrapped it and put it in the refrigerator.

Today we cut out and cooked pieces. Tonight I’m working on building the house so the icing can harden before we decorate tomorrow. I suspect Jack will eat more candy than decorate….but he’ll have fun anyways.