As mentioned in a previous post, this year I decided to try my hand at gingerbread from scratch! I looked around for a few recipes online, and found this one that looked good, mostly because I’m impatient and didn’t want to wait for the dough to chill. My better half had designed a very complicated “storage container loft style” gingerbread house complete with sugar glass windows and rooftop deck, that was an interesting idea, but in practice, was a lot harder to build than he realized. The royal icing was also made from scratch, and that needed a couple of tests before we found the right consistency to hold things together.

Yes, gumdrops with pretzel sticks did come in handy as columns after our candy canes didn’t work!

It’s up!

Half-decorated and reinforced loft area!

Results: DELICIOUS! I’d definitely made gingerbread from scratch again! Eating gingerbread, watching Christmas movies, and felting (as seen in the top of the picture) was a wonderful way to spend a December Saturday!

We did a few attempts at sugar glass, but the first was too wet, second and third, too dry (below), and then we looked at a few other recipes and realized the most successful ones were the ones with white corn syrup. I tried a couple of stores, but only found yellow – so we gave up for this year.