Closing Shop

I was going to write an article describing how I wrapped and put away the house and gum paste figures, but I thought that would be over-kill, and duller than a cheap chef’s knife.

Chiseled up…

Bagged up…

Boxed up…

Put up

So suffice to say that the house was placed in a plastic bag, boxed and put away until next Christmas. It was my intent from the start to keep the pastry pad for three Christmases, and if the books I read told me true, it should keep for that long and longer. The acid test will come in late November.

And so with the gingerbread house resting in a storage closet, the Gingerbread House Project is now at an end. It also ends this blog series until November 2013. I might post an article now and then, should anything newsworthy or interesting come up, but I’ll pick up again when the house is brought out for the holidays.

If you’re just finding this blog, please feel free to check the archives and see this adventure from the beginning. Also, check out my past and present writing on any and everything on the Clayton County Libraries blog.

Thanks to all of you who’ve followed, liked or took a look at my project. See you again this fall!

Out of House and Home

The inevitable question comes up about the gingerbread houses, with their enticing aromas of spices and molasses, the thick lines of icing and colorful candies: Can you eat it?

This is how Aaron Morgan of Making Great Gingerbread Houses answers: You can eat it, but you’re not gonna eat mine.

You’re creating more than an elaborate cookie: You’re creating a masterpiece. You’ve worked for days, maybe weeks, rolling thick, sticky dough, trying your best not to cut or burn yourself, resisting the temptation to nibble on the roof or eat all your candies, dripping sweat and shedding tears to make it just right. So you want it to endure for as long as possible for as many admiring eyes to behold.

Making a house is a labor of love. You can even see the process as giving birth: In school, I often experienced something like post-partum depression after finishing a creative project.

So the last thing you want is for some bug eyed person to bite off the chimney. I remember an episode of Ace of Cakes where then sous chef Geof Manthorne labored intensively to make a nicely designed cake in the form of a jeep, then watched in horror as the client ravaged it without so much as a “Hey, cool!”

But “you’re not gonna eat mine” is not how I answer when asked the question. I say, “Yes, but you don’t really want to.”

Gingerbread houses are indeed edible. The dough for houses is formulated to bake up sturdy rather than moist, like these gingerbread stockings that I made for co-workers; but it’s quite tasty.

With my house, though, the cookies made from that tasty yet sturdy dough sat drying out for about a week before I began assembly, and the house has been sitting out ever since, not once ever seeing the inside of an airtight container. Major staleness.

Remember the side pieces that I re-cut and baked, because the first ones had some surface blemishes? One evening, I dropped one of the original sides: It burst on the floor like a dirt bomb. Imagine chewing on that thing!The house is held together and decorated with royal icing. Completely edible, but after so many days and weeks, it may be unpalatable. The icing usually is made with egg whites — I used meringue powder, instead – and eating that old icing with uncooked egg whites would be risking a food borne illness.

I imagine some of the candies are safe to eat. Still, you’d have to mine them out of the landscape or off the sides and roof of the house. You can eat it, but you’re not gonna eat mine (Oops, did I say that?)

The gum paste figures would cause you all kinds of problems just biting into them. Over a month old, the stuff has dried as hard as rocks; you’d chip some teeth. And there’s the pieces of uncooked spaghetti connecting the reindeer heads to bodies, and though the tacky glue is not toxic, I can’t imagine any one sitting down to eat a bowl of it. Even if you can bite and chew a piece, gum paste – at least the brand I used – tastes really, really bad; worse than flavorless chewing gum. Those reindeer would be running you.

If you decide to make a gingerbread house for someone to eat or want to eat it yourself, I suggest that you not take four weeks to build like I did. Give about two days – several hours at least – before you serve it to bake and cool the cookies, to assemble the house and let the icing dry, and to decorate. Allow some time for ooos and ahhs over your creation before chowing down!

When making food art to be eaten, you have to settle in your mind from the start that it’s going to be consumed. With that mental divorce in place, you don’t develop the attachment that a creator forms with his/her work. No matter how much time, energy and love you put into creating your masterpiece dessert or dish, you won’t have a problem with someone taking a fork to it. In fact, you may have to encourage folks to eat it.

I’m sure that many of you have imbibed a lot of the bubbly liquid pictured above late last night/very early this morning; and am sure that many of you are now feeling the after-effects of said liquid; or hopefully it’s worn off as you read this.

I’ve come on to wish you a happy New Year, and all the best for achieving your New Year’s resolutions, whatever they may be. (Speaking of resolutions, don’t give up if you break one or more early on, but dust off and begin again!  Resolutions don’t have to be made at the New Year only, by the way!)

While some folks have five more days of Christmas to celebrate, today ends the holiday season for many, including me.  In a few days, I’ll wrap up the gingerbread house, literally, and wrap up the blog for the season.  Check back this weekend and next week for the last postings.

Until then, enjoy the New Year!

Mobile Home (or, The Ruining of the Deer)

I hear you asking:  What’s up with Prancer and that stack of candy under his antler?  Well, there’s a story behind this and more…

When the Library’s Christmas party was announced back in October, I told the party organizer, our Circulation Manager, that I was building a gingerbread house and asked if I could display it as part of the party décor.  “Yes” was the answer, it would fit into the décor scheme of Christmas toys.

 Fast forward several weeks later.  The night before I officially finished the project, and was to pack it up to take to the Library, I finished up the reindeer by making red harnesses for them.  I also shaped red tubes in which a strand of licorice would be inserted, serving as reins.  The tubes were glued to the harnesses and left to dry overnight.  The next night, I wanted to snap some pictures before I packed everything up, so I needed to attach the licorice rein to the harnesses.  I tried inserting the licorice into the first tube.  Now when I shaped the tubes, I formed them around the licorice strand so they’d be the correct size and make inserting the candy string easy.  But the tubes didn’t hold their shape, and the licorice wouldn’t go in.  I gave the strand some gentle force, and the licorice went into the first harness. 

The second harness didn’t go in easily, either.  In forcing the second, Prancer lost an antler.

Ouch.  As you recall from previous postings, gum paste and I don’t get along to well.  A luta continua.

I glued the antler back with gum paste glue.  I found that stacking up some chocolate candy pieces was of sufficient height to brace up the antler while the glue dried (hence, the photo at the head of this article).  The glue ought to be set by morning, and then Prancer could be packed up with the other gum paste figures.  Meanwhile, I carefully worked around him to carefully pack up the house, icing trees and gum paste figures.  In the morning, Prancer’s antler was holding.  I gingerly wrapped him bubble wrap and gingerly placed him in the box with the other figures.

I was more nervous about moving the house and landscape base than anything.  I remembered those Food Network competitions where bakers and sugar artists had to move their huge, elaborate sugar or cake creations from a work station to a judging table, a mere four feet away.  More than once someone’s work, hours in the making, went crashing to the floor into umpteen pieces.  Fortunately that didn’t happen to me.  Placing the house in a bubble wrap lined box went smoother than I expected.

The journey from my house to the Library was smoother than I expected, too.  No aggressive drivers out that morning; no potholes rattled the car; no need for speed or sudden stops.  Even the rain held off while I carried the boxed house into the library building.

No, the house wasn’t what I had to worry about, but the little box containing the gum paste figures and icing trees.  Upon unwrapping them, I found that Prancer’s antler had fallen off again!  Overnight wasn’t enough time for that glue to set!  While I had a backup plan for any icing conundrum, I didn’t have one for gum paste.  With less than an hour to set up before the party started, I asked the Circulation Manager for some glue, any glue.  The thought flashed through my mind that by using glue, my piece would no longer be entirely edible.  Well, I didn’t have time to be fussy.  The CM gave me some book glue:  Strong and fast drying, she assured me.    On went the glue, on went the antler.  After five minutes of holding it in place, the antler held.

Olive (the other reindeer) didn’t give me any grief as I attached the reins to her, neither did Prancer.  So now it was on to placing the sleigh and Santa.

Those chocolate candies that held up Prancer’s antler:  I found them at the Dollar Tree.  Each candy had a foil wrapper that looked like gift wrap with a bow.  Yeah, the wrappers were not edible, but it would be cool to have little presents in the sleigh with Santa.  I stood Santa in the sleigh, and began placing the candies in the sleigh around him.  The weight of the candy shifted, pushing the elf over the front of the sleigh and onto the “cobblestone” path.  His arms flew off on impact.  Some serious trauma, no? 

Santa before his arms were attached. History repeated itself weeks later.

I was able to apply the book glue to Santa and reattach one arm, but the other arm wouldn’t bind to his body.  What to do? 

Weihnacthsmann was to Sugar Santa as Tebow is to Sanchez.

I had my collection of International Santa Claus figures on display at the Library, and considered taking one from the display case to fill in for my sugar Claus (Hey, the glue already took out the all edible factor, so why not a polyresin Santa?).  Those figurines have a lot of detail on them, like plants, bird and toys, that would look odd in context with the whole of the project:  Hardly any of them would fit the bill.

 

I thought of abandoning the sleigh and reindeer altogether, but that would leave the path empty and the “negative space” would stick out like a sore red and green thumb. 

 

In the end, Santa was 86’d, and the gift laden sleigh being pulled by driverless reindeer graced the path instead.

 

No one noticed, though, and the house was a success.  I received many compliments on it.  My co-workers especially wondered how I got the inside of the house to light!  The house ultimately was a brick in the fabulous Santa Claus and toys theme that the Circulation staff created to decorate the room.  I so regret not taking pictures to share with you!

When the party was over, the house was packed up and transported home without incident; well, there was the car that pulled out in front of me, sending everything not strapped down hurtling forward as I braked.  No problem unpacking the house.  But…

Prancer’s antler had fallen off again.  And one of Olive’s ears.  And don’t forget one armed Santa.  I didn’t take a picture, but the lot looked rather pitiful.  Or defiant.  While I was able to shape them into a mythical elf and sleigh pulling beasts of burden, they would spoil my victory, even if it meant losing their own limbs.  They would not be mastered.  They were gum paste.

Or the things were fragile, I mishandled them and they broke.  No need to blame shift.

Aileen’s Tack Glue was always a reliable tool in my craft arsenal, and she came to the rescue again.  With it, the loose appendages went back onto the figures, bonding in no time. 

Through this whole experience, I worried about the house staying intact.  Turns out that I should have spent some energy on the little foxes, too, ‘cause they nearly ruined the vineyard!  The gum paste figures brought the drama to this adventure, even the whole project!

But now they’re repaired, the entire project reassembled and set on the sideboard, this time 100 percent complete.  It’s going nowhere for the next couple of weeks!  Take a look:

 

Hodie Christus Natus Est

If you’re reading this today (December 25), thanks!  because I know you have family and friends with whom to celebrate the day rather than give my little old blog a read!

My family and I had gatherings yesterday — a visit with an aunt at her nursing home and a light meal at my home — so today will be a day of rest for me.  After baking and building and blogging between work and life for the last few weeks, I’m looking forward to it.

I’m on line this morning to thank you for frequenting my blog and to wish you a safe and happy holiday!  Whether or how ever you celebrate it, enjoy the day!

The Big Finish!

I was very happy to finish the gingerbread house!  At that point, I was a bit behind schedule; by the time I started on the landscape, I was two weeks behind!  It didn’t take long to complete the base, and once it was done… well, here, let me show you:

For the landscape base, I used a cardboard sheet.  I traced the spot for the house to sit, and a path on which sleigh would travel.  Notice the opening in the house footprint: the light cord will go through this opening and insert in an opening in the house’s base.  Before I iced the board and the house base, I made the decision to reinforce both with a second layer of cardboard.  With the weight of the candy decoration, handling the house had become a little precarious.  The extra layer added stability, and I hoped for the same with the landscape base.
 

With the reinforcement in place, I added a coverage of “snow,” rather royal icing.  The technique used to ice the sleigh was used to accomplish this.  I piped a bead of icing around the perimeter of the base, the house footprint and the pathway. 

Icing is pushed into nooks and crannies using a skewer

“Snow” icing dries. The bowl keeps the board from buckling

I then “flooded” the inside of the outlines with thinned icing.  The same technique was used on the house’s base.  Both were left to dry overnight.

 
Now I put the house inside its footprint on the landscape.  See how it stands higher than the landscape with the added cardboard:  Not pretty.  I piped icing around the base to hide the corrugated skirting, smoothing it with a spatula.


Given time, I would’ve worked to make the piping smoother and blend the seams.  I decided to move on:  I’m already behind schedule.

 Laying the “cobble stones” on the path was simply flooding sections of the pathway and placing Sprees candy in the icing.  Chiclets were laid like paving stones for the house walkway using the same technique.

I have three trees, but want more “greenery.”  Spearmint gum leaves are placed about the house and landscape as shrubbery.
 

Ain’t it pretty?!  But you ain’t seen nothing yet!  I placed Santa, the sleigh, the reindeer, the gingerbread kids…

 

 

 DONE!  Sorta.  At this point – and you’ll see it in later pictures – I’ve yet to add the reins to the reindeer harnesses (added the day before).

SPOILER: When I did add the reins, stuff happened.  That, and the scene with the windows lit, is in our next episode!

A Very, Very, Very Fine House

There’re still some stories to tell about the finish of this project, and of the finished project.  But I promised to reveal it right about now.  So rather than drag it out — I’m about two weeks behind schedule as is! — it’s time to reveal…

 

At least…

 

The finished house!

Next, I’ll talk about the process of finishing and bringing everything together, followed by its showing at the Library holiday party.

Thanks for sticking with me this long!