There was a fight at my house tonight. I almost lost but I gained the upper hand. My opponent was strong and dark and crumbly as hell. Huh? Oh, didn’t I say that I was battling my gingerbread?
My regular readers among you might remember that I posted last year about our family gingerbread house tradition. Well this past weekend was the weekend I chose to begin to make this year’s creation. Trouble is, tonight it took almost everything I had to get the gingerbread to cooperate!
I made the dough on Saturday night and put it in the fridge to rest until tonight. It was clovey and cinnamony and allspicey and gingery and I was really looking forward to rolling it out. (And, of course, eating some raw dough along the way.) But tonight, when I pulled the dough from the fridge and started to work on it, it fought me all the way. It didn’t want to stay together, it was hard as nails, it would break into tiny little pieces when I tried to roll it with my rolling pin. I fought and I fought and I fought with that dough until … my rolling pin snapped!
Aieeee! What a time for my wooden friend to fail me. I’ve had my rolling pin since I lived in Vancouver, at least 10 years. I still remember when and where I bought it and it has served me well in its short lifetime. I guess the gingerbread dough was so hard to roll that the rolling pin just gave out – the handle snapped off at one end. Of course, then the real battle began. I still had about four pieces of the gingerbread house to roll out and now I had no handles on my rolling pin. I started to sweat as I put everything I had into making that dough bend to my will. (God help me, I know now that I will never buy one of those handle-less rolling pins. Never!)
Finally I had all the pieces for the house measured and cut (four sides, two roofs, and a bottom) and into the oven they went. As usual, I had a bunch of dough left over for making gingerbread men and ladies (or trees, bells, Santas … you get the drift) but at this point I just couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed a small juice glass, punched it into the dough to make some dough-circle cookies and decided to call it a day. It was the first time that I – gasp – actually threw some of the remaining dough away. I just couldn’t take the rolling anymore! (Who needs a gym membership when you have gingerbread to contend with?)
It’s time to rest after my “Battle Gingerbread” tonight but, trust me, the gingerbread left the fight in worse shape than I did! I’m sure the pieces will still make a respectable house when I put them together in a few days but they look like they’ve been through a windstorm already. Cracks in the foundation of any house are never good, but at least in this case I will have icing on my side. As long as the roof doesn’t cave in before Christmas, I’m golden! And Chelsea is too young to critique her second gingerbread house anyway, isn’t she?
Gingerbread pieces cooling
sounds like you need construction gingerbread! if i’m not eating it, I stick to a difft recipe for gbread houses than I use for eating. technically its still edible (but not nearly as delicious), but way more structurally sound!
It’s never failed me in the past but maybe I left it in the fridge too long and it became too hard? Not sure what I did wrong this time. I’ve probably made it 20 times before!
Interested in your “construction” recipe though, do you have it online somewhere?
grrrr. been there, done that, although not breaking the rolling pin! Don’t buy a glass one, eh?
It’s now a good Christmas idea for me! he he
[...] 7, 2009 by Beth I mentioned the other day how hard it was to roll out my gingerbread this year. This is what you get when your dough doesn’t cooperate and your rolling pin breaks halfway [...]
[...] if I do say so myself! After the pitiful excuse for a house that I put together in 2009 (where I broke my rolling pin making it) there was nowhere to go but up. Although I do admit that the photo above is showing this [...]