Gingerbread House Tips, Tricks, Failures, and Musings

An allegory made of gingerbread for 2020

Don’t let 2020 win. Devote whatever any energy you have left in you to making a gingerbread house. That is the only way to save this year. Or so the angels tell me.

December knocked on the door, and as one does, I swaddled myself in everything within my immediate grasp that even closely resembled Christmas cheer. I bought a tree. I bought a wreath. I hung garland for holiday cards. I bought a second wreath which fell thrice from the kitchen window. I listened to playlists like Christmas Cocktail Jazz and New York Christmas until Alexa shot silence back at me in stubborn demur. I placed candles on the dining room table (Fire! Wow! De fête!) and noticed something missing by its side. Ah, yes, a gingerbread house.

I harked back to an image I saw by Constellation Inspiration (cue the angels singing) of a delicately constructed gingerbread greenhouse. The “stained glass” made of gelatin sheets! The symmetrical windows and cuts! The filigree! The festivité!

I knew I had to make it. I quickly Amazon’d (it must be a verb at this point, yeah?) some gelatin sheets, of which I even shelled out the $3.99 for expedited² shipping. I spent that Sunday making a template so precise the windows were spaced .37” apart! I cut and baked the gingerbread (which recipe definitely needs a good tweak (read my review as cupofpoodles)). I let it cool and prepared the icing. I placed the pieces together gingerly (ha!) and piped until my hands crumpled from cramps. I tweezered hand-crafted (but not by mine!) papier-mâché poinsettias over every window like a mad woman with tunnel vision. It was perfect.

10 hours had elapsed. 10 HOURS. But it was done. Finito. Terminado. I threw away the leftover icing. I wiped the countertops. I vacuumed the table littered with decorative debris. I said aloud, “I should wait until tomorrow to lift it up,” and walked away.

But then there’s this: an unwavering disposition of impatience. Maybe some suppressed leanings towards masochism sprinkled in. Myopia in wanting this glass studded gingerbread house next to the candles (still de fête) now!

I walked back to the table. I lifted it up.

Hands seized. Sidings slid. Hands jerked. Sidings split. A screech. Nearby, a car alarm to ordain the occasion and morass of sugar, spice, and lost time. I fell to my knees, a forced genuflection to 2020 and the havoc it had just heaved onto my dining room table.

Okay, dramatic, I get it.

But 10 hours! 10 HOURS! Pictured above is my feeble attempt of sticking the mess back together with no additional icing. “Tough luck, kid,” I imagine Herald and his angels singing (where did he get all these angels!?). I threw it in the trash where it, and the rest of the year, belonged.

Fast forward to Monday. I’m retelling this now faraway fable of failure in frosting at work. This gingerbread house was supposed to be!  If it did, I would have built a gingerbread house replica of Locust, the newly opened restaurant (if you have any iota of love for yourself you will order the dumplings and shrimp toast and anything and everything they sell. These are the prerequisites for self-love, as so the angels tell me). Through their encouragement, my mind started turning, yearning for a successful holiday confection. I ordered more gelatin sheets. This time, I would take it slow (no more expedited² shipping for this gal).

I won’t get into the nitty gritty, itty bitty details of the process. As you can see, it turned out! And turned out it did (who came up with this phrase? Out where!?). It sits peacefully and unmoving at Locust (sorry, candles!) where you can see it when you order your dumplings because you, yes you, are worthy of self-love.

But here are a few tips that I learned the second time around (fool me once, shame on the gingerbread house, fool me twice, shame on me and my dreams and my life etcetera, etcetera, etcetera).

1. Make a template! Cut it out! Use it to trace your lines! Don’t let yourself think for a second that you can eyeball .37”. You can’t.
2. Roll your gingerbread in-between two pieces of parchment paper. It will be a mess otherwise. And bake it on that parchment! The first time around I baked it on a silpat and I think this contributed a lot to the fractures in the dough. Something about transfer of heat and science and all that jazz. Don’t @ me.
3. Don’t be afraid of overbaking your gingerbread house. The more dry, the better (think dry to almost crumbling, it is 2020 after all).
4. Make any necessary re-cuts and re-shaping fixes when the dough is hot out of the oven. Then let it cool! Don’t pick it up!
5. If using gelatin sheets, attach them to the back of the windows before decorating. And on that note…
6. Decorate before you assemble!
7. Make a base. Maybe this should be 1.a.
8. If this is all overwhelming, do it in steps. For the Locust construction, I made the template one day. The next day, I baked the gingerbread pieces. The next day, I decorated and assembled.
9. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS CHRISTMAS, DON’T PICK IT UP. LET IT SETTLE OVERNIGHT. GO GET SOME DUMPLINGS WHILE YOU WAIT FOR IT TO DRY.
10. Have fun 🙂