DARING BAKERS: GINGERBREAD HOUSE

Although I come from Finland (the same place where Santa lives, you know), I had never made a gingerbread house before. And I'm truly not pleased with the one I accomplished.

See, the real Santa

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Due to horrible pre-christmas hustle I had already decided not even to try to participate in the month's challenge. However, a few nights before christmas I reconsidered: I decided to participate but also to cheet a bit. So I took out a 500g pack of ready made gingerbread dough from the freezer and started to draw the templates on parchment paper. (And now can't find the link to the template I used...)

Then the next night I took the pieces, did some decorating and glued the pieces together with royal icing. The roof is decorated with white chocolate and a chocolate transfer sheet (the idea I got from the blog of my favorite cookie decorator here). For the other decorations I used some sprinkles, candies and royal icing.

I made a mistake. I should have kept my hands off of the challenge, since I actually ended up not enjoying it at all. I was too tired and after midnight just totally ran out of any decorating ideas. Well, I also ran out of royal icing.

Still I didn't let my unsuccesful house ruin my christamas mood and packed it with us when we left to spend the christmas eve at my parent's summer house. And I'm 100% sure that there are two little girls who think it's the best gingerbread house ever, when they get to eat it after christmas!

The almost hundred year old star on the top of the christmas tree.

ENG-FIN:
Joulukuun Daring baker -haaste oli tehdä piparakakkutalo "from the scratch". Itse en ole koskaan piparitaloa tehnyt ja nytkin mokasin, kun yritin viime metreillä väkisin saada talon aikaiseksi. Sen sijaan että olisin ollut jo nukkumassa aatonaaton vastaisena yönä, koetin keittiössä keksiä koristeluita talopahaseen. Enpä oikein keksinyt ja talo jäikin aika ankean orvoksi. Piparitalon näpertäminen on multa liikaa vaadittu. Ehkä parin vuoden päästä uudelleen.