Merry Christmas from gingerbread Michael, Greta and Diana (the dog)! Oh, and me and Caity, who did all the work!
Caity, one of my managers at work, and I decided one day that it would be incredibly fun to make a gingerbread version of our store. Well, guess what? We did and it was. Here are some pics of the finished product- Enjoy! If you go to your local Williams-Sonoma you'll actually see one of those little dogs in the window! Most of the decorative work was done in fondant and modeling chocolate. If you have questions about it, just ask and I'll let you know!
Merry Christmas from gingerbread Michael, Greta and Diana (the dog)! Oh, and me and Caity, who did all the work!
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Sorry it has been so long since an update! I feel bad neglecting this blog but I recently acquired a second job and for a while I was working 7 days a week, every week. So when I did get some off-hours all I wanted to do was sleep and veg out. But hopefully I can get back on track with some more regular postings. Some of you may remember that last year I constructed a gingerbread house for Halloween and one for Christmas for my job. They were both from a box set and while being cute and adorable, did not leave much room for creativity. So this year my roommate and I wanted to up the ante. We were going to throw a Halloween party and for that party we were going to make the best haunted gingerbread house ever. Well, we did make an awesome haunted house. It wasn't quite what we imagined it to be and is missing a lot of the details we so lovingly dreamed it would have. Basically, we just ran out of time. The house was based on a model seen in the book The Gingerbread Architect by Susan Matheson and Lauren Chattman. We appropriated the design and then completed ignored every decorating instruction. This is the basic structure of the house. I used nothing but royal icing to keep it together, so in theory the whole thing could be edible. This is the house plus roof and stairs. The roof was definitely the hardest part of the entire process. The roof support plank was not as hard as the rest of the gingerbread and subsequently cracked under the weight of the side panel. I tried to prop it up with some extra supports (I really wanted to attach some flying buttresses but didn't have the wherewithal) and it has held so far. Although, given that the house is a dilapidated mess on purpose, it would have been in character of the house to have a little cave in. The ghost that haunts the house! Thanks, Gramie for the peeps! The scummy pond is made of molasses. It is my favourite feature of the entire house. Probably because it was my idea and just looks so great, if I may say so myself. Melted butterscotch candies make broken out windows. Tootsie Roll path complete with missing flagstones and weeds. The grass is dyed coconut (what else?). The roof of moldy shingles is made of cornflakes that I tried to dye. This was the second most time consuming process. Haunted House! Most of this was done the day before and the day of Halloween, so given the time constraints we accidently put on ourselves, I'd say this was a success. I can't wait to give it a go next year. Especially since there were some ideas we didn't get to use. Oh, and the broken fence is made of Twiglets, specially imported by my friend Jonathan. Also at the party were the shrunken heads of our enemies, turned into classy candleholders. Hope everyone had a brilliant Halloween!
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