AP Moment of the day~ Keeping traditions alive!

Every year I host a Gingerbread House Day and we have done this for 8 years now! I really enjoy doing it and find it SUCH fun. As the years go on though and the children get bigger and into more stuff more and more folks started going the old "Kit" way! I always Poo Pooed the kits preferring our traditional labor of love method, but this year.... this year I nearly succumbed. I saw some kits in Target and I gave it serious thought. I suddenly realised how easy this could be!! I could buy TWO kits, each child would have one of his and her own... I would have to do NOTHING!!! Yeeahhyy!!! Well given that all children want to do is glue candy onto gingerbread what could be better....!!?? I went home and asked Jessie what she thought..... "How about we just buy KITS this year?!?!?! " "No!!" she said! "No, I want us to make the dough and design our own houses....!!"

I was stunned!!! and secretly thrilled I suppose! All those years and all that effort was not for nought at least!!! so home made gingerbread houses it is!!! until next year maybe!?!? :D

Today was Gingerbread House Making Day!! This is no small task people!! :D I have no intention of eating our houses, so I use really cheap flour, eggs and such... the ingredients just have to be the right consistency as far as I am concerned! :D We make a double batch of dough so we have enough for a huge house. We have to make the dough a few days in advance and let it get really cold. After we've let the dough sit a few days in the fridge, we then have to decide what we are going to make then we design templates for it and cut it out. Baking is pretty easy but in order to make the walls etc really hard and strong we bake it longer (much longer) than usually required. Again the walls and such need to sit for at least another 24 hours, preferably longer, to make sure they are really firm. I've tried making gingerbread houses with soft roofs and walls to disastrous results!!!! Today was the day of assembly so we use a "glue" of powdered sugar and egg whites to build the walls and then we glue candies and what have you to decorate it up!! :D Today's was a castle and we strove for some realism so didn't use much in the way of candies apart from my concession to the gummi sharks swimming in the moat of blue sugar!!! It was quite successful really and the children really did enjoy putting it all together! What do you think?!