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why did I try to put together a gingerbread house?

R

rikkib

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:confused:
This has been a total disaster! We bought one of those "pre made" kits and it kept falling apart... Anyway, I am a self certified take out queen and have made a New Years Resolution to save money so I must start, gasp, cooking. I will take all of the help I can get! I have 2 little ones, ages 4 and 6, and figured they should be eating better things than a happy meal!
 
Hi Rikkib and welcome to SicePlace, I know your sentiment about building a gingerbread house, it is quite frustrating indeed!!! I built one one year for my granddaughter and neice and it was sooooo cute and decorated beautifully, when I wasn't trying to hold it together! I finally snapped a few photos of it before it finally collapsed into a heaping pile:eek: But it was fun and we had a few great laughs watching it try to break apart despite all our efforts.

Well at least we can really appreciate those whom are talented and knowledgeable enough to build them and they stay together!
 
lordy I needed help

boy oh boy, I'm going to be at this site all the time. I'm 39 years young and a NEW COOK !!! I can make baked ziti(jarred sauce) and a turkey(no brainer) but thats about it:p
 
rikkib - congratulations on your choice to become a cook!
Stick with us kid and you'll do just fine! and we will help you.
I make gingerbread houses - very time consuming.
Hope you're sitting down for this one - the kids are the perfect age to start making them. (pre-made kits are the pits too!)
Grab some quart or half gallon milk and juice containers and cut the bottoms off - about halfway up. Give the kids different colored frostings, candies, cookies, etc and let them plaster the frosting on and start decorating. They will love it. They will want to make a whole village!
My one friend has trouble with her houses - so she bakes the dough in one large sheet, cuts out the pieces (using heavy cardboard cutouts she made) and then she SHELLACS the dough! She makes a frosting that is like paste and does it that way.
I'll stick to the way I do it - I can't be bothered with shellac, etc.

Also - make cookie houses with the kids - using frosting and crackers and wafers of various sizes (my other friend cheats and "glues" them to milk cartons with frosting!)
(just a thought) and you wouldn't know the difference (she doesn't bake so pretty cookies in packages do just fine!
 
rikkib, Don't get frustrated. I have been cooking all my life as a home cook and as a professional. I can't tell you how many disasters and disappointments I have created through the 39 odd some plus years.
Besides cooking I am a Carpenter. I would suggest that if any one wants to make a decorative Ginger Bread house, not for eating purposes, make a pattern from card board first. The walls, the roof, the chimney. Then using the frosting for a glue and the card board for templates, cut the ginger bread to size and using the frosting for glue, paste the ginger bread cut outs onto the card board. After cutting the ginger bread to size, I usually hot glue the card board frame together to make the shell of the house.
After the ginger bread has all been pasted onto the frame, use the frosting on the seams to look like trim and snow and ice. Use hard candy, candy canes and licorice and little ginger bread people for decorations. The decorations can be for the children that want the Hansel and Gretel experience and snack on the house. The nice thing about a gingerbread house like this, wrap it up in plastic wrap after the Christmas season and store it until the following year. When your ready to use it, just redecorate.For those that don't want to use gingerbread, Graham Crackers work excellent..
 
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Great tips there IC!!! Thanks for sharing! Now I have one further question...if I were to make my granddaughter a ginger bread house with the cardboard wouldn't it make since to bake the gingerbread cookie with out sugar etc. to save on $$$?
 
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Cathy, baking to me is like a science experiment. You mix certain ingredients together, apply heat or cold and the composition changes to give you a certain result. Change the ingredients and you get different results. Sugar in a baking recipe is considered a liquid. Substitutes for sugar are more expensive. A 5lb bag of sugar here is under 3.00. To save money I would just use the Graham crackers.
Take it from someone that has done it many a time. Card board frame or not I am going to grab me a piece of gingerbread. That frosting holding them together doesn't stop anyone, lol. I wouldn't eat an old one.
 
Well IC here's the result of our gingerbread building today! We had fun, got into a few fights 'cause I was being a control freak, but we managed to finish it in one piece!!! Sorry it's such a small image, but hopefully my buddy Jglass will come thru and help me post a nicer size image to share!
 
CCC, they are programs like photo buket, Image shack and Flikr that are use for photo storage. You down load pictures and the sites give you codes to use on pages like this.
snowballsplattgotchafk9.gif
 
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