Done with a day left....

[foodpump]

The sales dept. kindly filled out the form for an annual gingerbread competition, and then told me about it. Iv'e been sneaking an hour or two every day to work on it. Came in today to finish it off, and I'm glad to get it off my back.

 

[azenjoys]

Gorgeous! Congrats on being done!

 

[brianshaw]

Sweet!

 

[chefwriter]

It was worth it from this vantage point. Great job.

 

[chefbuba]

Nice work there FP.

 

[foodpump]

Thanks you guys!

 

[cheflayne]

Awesome job!

 

[pete]

Great work!!! I love it. I have done numerous gingerbread "houses" in my career. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my portfolio that I had all the pictures. Years of work lost forever. My favorite though, is the church I did for the centerpiece of our gift table, for our wedding (it was Dec. 30th, 2000). Stained glass windows, steeple with bells in it, lit from within. Of all those pictures my favorite is a picture of one of my ferrets climbing all over it and taking chunks out of it (after the event!). Looked like some monster movie!

 

[foodpump]

Stained glass windows..... and I just used gelatin leaves for mine. Thats something for me to figure out for next year.

 

[pete]

It's a simple process. Just crush up some hard candies (like Jolly Ranchers). When your gingerbread is about 3/4's of the way done fill your window holes with the crushed candy and finish baking. The candies will melt. You will need to bake your gingerbread on either parchment or foil because you will need to keep the gingerbread on it while you are transferring it to cool. Don't cool on wire racks or you can get waves in the "glass". You can use 1 single color for each window or use a variety. I find mixing the colors doesn't always work out really well, but I will put piles of each color in the same window. They will melt and swirl together a little bit. Wish I had those pictures to share.

 

[flipflopgirl]

Spending most of Dec "up country" with the DD and my namesake Grand.
Going to make some memories and a GB structure is on the must do list.
Using a darker gingerbread was smart.
It makes the house pop...never occurred to me but it has now!

mimi

 

[jcakes]

Great job, it looks wonderful!

What did you use for the roof tiles? I'm intrigued; usually I end up with the Famous wafers (they are very thin, dark chocolate rounds and I overlap them; I am not a fan of an entirely candy roof) but I like yours better. Also the checkerboard cookie walk way!

 

[foodpump]

Gingerbread, rolled out thin, cut into 1" strips, then baked. Then cut into 1 1/4" lengths and glued down with royal icing. The checkerboard cookies are one of my standards...