Gingerbread for Thanksgiving

In The Gingerbread Book by Alan D. Bragdon (available at my local library) lies a pattern that is perfect for a Gingerbread Turkey Centerpiece for Thanksgiving.

For those of you not quite ready to embrace the CHRISTMAS spirit (BECAUSE THANKSGIVING IS A HOLIDAY THAT COMES FIRST!) this might be a wonderful gingerbread/craft option to tackle.

I made the turkey in 2012.  I think I was sick and bored out of my mind at home, so I decided to craft (and I washed my hands a lot and didn't hack on the gingerbread).

I loved this little turkey.  The pattern is smaller, so it's not a huge project.   It's not intimidating either, so it's a nice place to start if you're new to gingerbread.

It's also a great way to use up some Halloween Candy...if you don't want to eat it all for some reason...

Here's what I made:

I had extra gingerbread dough, so I made the pumpkin cookies.

I also didn't really have a base in mind that was small enough for this turkey (like I said, I just got this idea while home on a sick day) so you can see I only covered part of it with ground animal crackers left over from our 2012 Halloween House.  You're supposed to be looking at the turkey anyway :-)

Happy (early) Thanksgiving!

Baking More than Gingerbread

I've seriously wanted to make this post since...like...May.  Here we are, 4 weeks away from my due date, and I'm just now getting around to making the "baby announcement" in gingerbread.

I've been busy making cakes!

At this point, I made the carriage to bring in to school.  Every year, my third graders get excited that I'm the "gingerbread teacher" who brings in treats around Halloween and Christmas.  I'll be on maternity leave for both of those holidays, so I thought I'd do this instead!

If you haven't guessed, we're having a girl.

I got the idea from:

I made some modifications, since I'm making it for 8-9 year-olds.  I did not make the marzipan baby, and instead, added more icing and candy decorations.  I'm also going to pour more candy inside the carriage for my kids to devour.  

I respect that, to my students, the fun is all the sugar, not the tasty gingerbread pieces underneath.

I will say, however, that I had extra gingerbread pieces (extra supports etc. I baked off) and they taste AMAZING.  Especially good dipped in coffee!  (or decaf.  whatever)

As aforementioned, (oooh fancy word!) I gladly spent my summer fulfilling cake and cupcake orders.  An unexpected side-effect to this was that I got rusty making gingerbread!  I'm sure it didn't help that I did not have my other two Gingerbuilders with me to help...or the traditional wine to encourage creative thinking...but I definitely hit a few hiccups making this carriage, and I thought I'd share them with you, so you could learn from my mistakes.

1.  When rolling cutting and baking your pieces, remember

roll out your pieces and bake them on parchment paper!  I forgot this the first time I rolled the dough, warped pieces pulling them from the counter with a spatula, and had to try again.  Duh!

2.  What To Do if you Break a Piece

I know I know.  Megan wasn't there.  But it still happened.  Twice actually.  On 2 different pieces.  Like I said, I was out of practice!

Don't panic.  Just remember, most mistakes can be covered or fixed with icing.  :-)

I iced my pieces back together and used a support just to make sure it would hold.

All that mess is on the inside.  No way you can tell when I put it all together.

3.  Storing Royal Icing

I found this lovely site FULL of great info on royal icing.  Check it out: Sweetopia

This project took me several days to complete.  I did it alone, and pieces needed to dry before I could continue the project.  For these reasons, I stored my royal icing in the fridge in piping bags.  

The icing loosened/separated after 1-2 days.  I didn't want to re whip it because it was already in the bags.  This made for fun challenged.  I had to decorate everything flat so the icing wouldn't run everywhere.

  

Then let it dry, and flip the carriage to work on another part.

In the end, I made a new batch and whipped it fresh.  Being lazy doesn't pay off.  I was worried about matching color, but I think I did okay.

I went back over some of the sloppier parts with the newer icing.  

Meh.  This wasn't a competition piece.  It's for third-graders!  Who are going to love it.

The first of many Labors of Love for our Little Girl.

Gingerbread Research

I wanted to enter gingerbread competitions, I wanted to improve my craft, I wanted to be inspired!

I checked out many gingerbread books from the library.  I found these books to be amazingly helpful with tips and easy-to-use patterns!  I thought I would share the resources with you!

Building with different patterns gave me baking practice and allowed me to see how different structures fit together.  This experience is REALLY helpful when it comes to designing my own gingerbread patterns.  2-story patterns, complex roofs, etc.  I also have a friend who is an architect and all around crafty guy.  You better believe I'll be bringing him in on some projects!

I highly recommend the Teresa Layman books:

Gingerbread Things to Make and Bake









and

Gingerbread for All Seasons







I found that these books are full of great ideas and easy for beginners to moderates to understand.  Not to mention the resource of patterns!

Other resources you may want to explore:
 

It appears we are not the only lovers of gingerbread!

Stephanie's Perspective: How it all Began

It starts as a hobby, and grows to a passion.  Do you ruin it by making it a business?  Or do you dedicate your days to what you love?  Depends on how you look at it.

It certainly helps to work with your friends. :-)

2010.  It all started for me when...

I saw a friend's photos from a cake decorating class on Facebook.  "Hmm, that looks like fun," I mused, and moved on with my life.

Weeks later, she built a gingerbread bowling alley for the local town's gingerbread house holiday contest.  (I didn't even know this contest existed.)  I saw the bowling alley and thought, "How cool!  I'd love to build something as awesome as that."

Must have also said as much to Erin, who told me she'd built gingerbread houses before and would happily show me how.

Woot!


After about an hour of shopping on Amazon, I finally settled on Making Great Gingerbread Houses by Aaron Morgan and Paige Gilchrist, and my new hobby was born.


I studied photos, read the book cover to cover several times, and tried out the recipe and house pattern. 




Mid December, I brought my gingerbread pieces to Erin's house, who was impress with my choice of pattern.  My very first gingerbread would not just be 4 walls and a roof, but a porch too.  I'd like to go back and build the house again, actually.  See how we could change it up now that we've grown in our craft.

With a Kitchen Aid Mixer and some soup cans to hold everything up while it dried, our first gingerbread house was created.

 Erin told me it was fun to mold with Marzipan.  She was right!  The snowman and pig were fun trials.



The tree is "stylized."  One of our favorite words!

The "Christmas lights" are chocolate covered sunflower seeds that I found at TJ Maxx.


As per the books instructions, I also melted some (sugar free actually) candy to make frosted windows.

 I made the wreath.  I was just discovering how much I liked to play with icing.

Erin made the cute marzipan pig.

 
 Pretty sure this house took us about 4 hours and 2 bottles of wine.  (Yes, we operate on wine time.)




But wait, there's 3 Gingerbuilders, you notice...

How keen of you.

Megan saw our pictures on Facebook (clearly the catalyst of our creation) and also wanted to make a house.  I had left over dough, so I made another pattern and us three girls met the very next day.  The master Erin, the apprentices Stephanie and Megan.

I reviewed what I had learned by teaching Megan.  Erin was so proud of her gingerbread students.  :-)

We took many more photos of our process.  And stopped to admire our work. :-)

 We found that a wine bottle is a perfect helper when making ice cream cone trees!  (Note the first house in the background...and the wine glass...)

 Our Greedo house (a happy accident) took us the whole day, with a lunch break of course.  We played with different snack foods and decided what we could use.

 Megan puts the finishing bows on my wreath.  I took to the icing, and she took to the details!

 We tried our first icing river!  and a sweet covered bridge that we wanted to start using in all of our pieces!  (Yes, of course there would be more!)  We discovered that the three of us made an excellent and creative team!

 By now, we were pretty sure that we were all awesome.

 We finished off the landscape.  Erin taught us how to make snow drifts.

and Gingerbuilders was born.