A random collection of content from the Ells
Just wanted to throw in a quick post to share some cute pictures of Ralphie. Heidi found a hot dog outfit for him that, for once, he doesn’t seem to mind wearing. Its too warm out at the moment to make a difference but I could see this working as his jacket once the temperature starts to drop.
I think he’s looking pretty cute and let’s face it, it’s always appropriate to have a wiener dog dressed as a wiener. 🙂
In the last installment we mixed up our gingerbread, traced out our pieces, and baked everything. Now its time to put it together in the gingerbread house construction phase.
Holding the parts together requires some icing to use as glue. Traditionally this is done with a “Royal Icing” made from icing sugar and egg whites with a bit of flavor added if that is your preference. This works fine and is the way my dad did it while I was growing up. I have a bit of a challenge in that my youngest daughter developed an anaphylactic allergy to egg when she was very young. Although she has now, luckily, grown out it, it did force me to find a different recipe for the icing that didn’t use eggs.
In searching around the interwebs, I came across a recipe that used the liquid from a can of chick peas, also called aquafaba, as a replacement for the egg. There are a few of these recipes floating around and I’m sure that most of them would work but, for reference, the one I use is essentially what you can find here. The only change I make is to reduce the amount of aquafaba a bit to make the icing slightly thicker. Once dry, it is more or less indistinguishable from traditional egg based royal icing.
With pieces and glue in hand, its time to put things together. There are two gotchas in the gingerbread house construction that you’ll need to deal with. The first is that no matter how carefully you mark the pieces and cut them, the cooking process will distort the lines just enough that things won’t come together cleanly. Second is that the icing isn’t structural until it has finished drying so you need a way to keep to the pieces in place until that happens. If you read many of the other blog posts on our site you’ll know I do some woodworking as well and the skills come in handy in addressing these issues.
Unless you have some baking secret that I’m unaware of, the pieces that you prepared for your house are likely not very square. You can put a house together as is but you’ll end up using a lot of icing to try and bridge the gap. To minimize this, you’ll want to make sure that the edges of the pieces are a straight as possible.
If I was doing this with wood, I’d pull out a plane and do a few passes to straighten the edge. As this is gingerbread, that’s not really an option but you can do something similar by laying a fine grater on a cutting board and running the pieces across it until true.
It only takes a few passes per piece and will make the rest of the construction considerably easier.
This is the fun step as you move from preparations to activities to actually building a gingerbread house! As I mentioned above, the icing doesn’t become structural until it is dried so one of the main challenges is holding the pieces in place until that happens.
When I first started building these houses, I would use Popsicle sticks to try and shore up the construction but this was less than successful. I’ve found a better method is to “nail” the pieces together using toothpicks for nails.
The process is pretty simple:
Put a bead of icing down and stick the two pieces together, While holding them in place, carefully drill a small hole through the gingerbread sheet and into the edge of the adjoining one.
The diameter of the drill bit you use should match the diameter of the toothpicks you will use later. You do need to take some care at this stage to drill into the middle of the thin edge of the adjoining piece. Its easy to get a bit crooked and come out the side. If this happens, don’t worry, it’s easy to cover up later.
Once you have the hole drilled, simply insert toothpick to act as a mechanical fastening device.
After sitting overnight, the icing will have hardened into a very effective structural component and you can simply pull the toothpicks and move on. When putting on the roof sections, you really only need one toothpick at the top corners of panels. There is no need to pin at the bottom, the weight of the panel will hold it in place as is.
Here’s a look at the completed structure waiting to set up.
That’s about enough for now. In the section, we’ll do the decorating to finish up. Thanks for reading!
Part One of this series can be found here.
Its been a while since I last put a post up so I’m actually writing about our Christmas tradition in the middle of July. Embarrassing I know. Still better late than never I suppose. In this post, I’ll cover off the gingerbread house recipe and baking process that I use to create the pieces of gingerbread used in the construction of the house.
The Christmas season pretty much uses up all my time preparing for the holidays and doing fun stuff with the family. One of the pieces of that preparation is the annual Gingerbread House build. This is something that we do every year. I’ve posted pictures of the houses from previous years here.
This year, I decided that I would document the creation of the house rather than just posting the pictures of the final project. Though, as I mentioned, I’m only actually getting to that 6 months later!
The gingerbread house recipe that I used here (and every year) is the same one that my father used when I was growing up. It is simple, straightforward, and creates a solid but tasty substrate for building the house. The only real challenge in making the recipe is how solid it is. It makes mixing it by hand a chore and by traditional mix master nearly impossible. Luckily, if you have access to a strong mixer, a KitchenAid in my case, that has a dough hook, it can handle the mixing duties just fine. So, without further ado – lets get going.
As I mentioned, the recipe is straight forward. The amounts shown below are for a single batch but I use two batches to make the house each year.
In a large pot melt the shortening and remove from heat. Transfer to the bowl of the Kitchen Aid and, using a dough hook, add the sugar and molasses. Sift 4 cups of flour with the remaining ingredients and add gradually into the molasses mixture while running the Kitchen Aid on low. Continue to mix the dough while working in the last cup of flour. The dough will be crumbly but do not add liquid. Divide in half and wrap in foil. Make a second recipe of dough and refrigerate both.
When ready to bake the dough, remove from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature. If needed, you can place it in the microwave for a few moments to soften the dough but be careful not to overheat. Roll out the dough to about 1/4″ thick and place on a silpat on a cookie sheet. Mark out the house pieces with a sharp knife but do not cut all the way through. Leave the excess dough in place.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until deep brown. Remove the gingerbread from the oven and retrace the lines with a sharp knife cutting fully through. Let cool and separate the house pieces from the off-cuts. Please note that in the pictures below, I’ve already pulled the off-cuts away after baking. Do this after baking, not before! If you pull them off before baking, the edges of the pieces will distort severely.
Don’t throw away the off-cuts! The tradition in our house is to not break into the gingerbread house until Christmas day so the off-cuts are the only chance you’ll get to taste the wonderful gingerbread before then.
Next installment, we’ll put the house together!
Part 2 of this series can be found here.
The robins have again decided that our back porch light would make a great location for a nest.
And so the laying began though, unlike last year, we ended up with only two eggs in the nest.
It was only a few days until we got some activity in the nest. Unfortunately only one of the eggs actually hatched. While its unfortunate that the other egg didn’t hatch, it did make for a very fast growing and plump little robin for the one that survived.
On one of the last days before it fledged, the baby robin mistook the camera for mom bringing food and nearly jumped out of the nest trying to get at it!
You can say right down the throat 🙂
Here is a picture from the last day before fledging where he is much more relaxed. Definitely plump and fills most of the nest. Hard to believe that there were 4 of them in the nest last year!
Since fledging, we’re pretty sure we’ve seen the little one around the yard starting life as an adult, another small but successful brood.