With all the rain we’ve had this week here in Victoria, it’s hard to remain excited about Christmas. It just doesn’t look like a winter wonderland in our neck of the woods. But I did something this week that always puts me in the Christmas spirit … I made our gingerbread house.
A family tradition, I’ve eaten homemade gingerbread houses each year at Christmas for as far back as I can remember. In fact, I’m eating gingerbread right now, as I write this blog post! I finished making this year’s house a couple of nights ago. After last year’s “Battle Gingerbread”, this year’s creation process went a lot more smoothly.
Now I don’t claim to be any sort of professional baker, I just like to put together a rustic homemade-looking house from scratch. (I also like eating the extra candies along the way.) This year I visited a specialty candy store to find the lego-like candies which make up the windows and the natural-looking stones that have become the front walk. The candy belts along the roof came from that store too. The rest of the decorating is just made up of smarties, jelly beans, gummy trees and snowmen, and chocolate raisins. I always use the same gingerbread and icing recipes as they’ve been serving our family well now for years upon years.
Our tradition also includes putting the initials of the “kid” in the family on the roof of the house, as I’ve done here for Chelsea’s initials:
I’m not a really big holiday baker, but I do like to do this one task each year. Can’t wait now to smash it to smithereens on Christmas Day and gorge on the pieces until the new year!
Warms the cockles of my heart. Love that tradition stuff. Some year I’ll make another gingerbread house for Ben, especially, so he gets in on the tradition.
[...] out 2009′s version and 2010′s version and let me know what you think – which is the winner? Mmm, can’t wait to get at this [...]