Wooden Beads & Pompom

Stick With What You Know ... Gingerbread Houses

My husband has a saying ... "Stick with what you know".   So today, when I had planned and baked ahead and was all ready to post about making gingerbread houses, things started falling apart, and this saying haunted me.

 

I made my gingerbread last night and left it to chill in the fridge overnight.  This afternoon I got it out and assembled everything to begin cutting out the cookies.

  

I had my cookie cutters all ready ... some are very old, from my grandfather's family ...

 

Most of them I've had for many years.  The large tin gingerbread man cutter was the first cookie cutter I bought after I was married ...

 

 

I rolled out the dough, and cut out the shapes.  So far ... so good!

 

 

I've made this recipe for about 25 years now, and I never have trouble with it.  I've made the Royal Icing before too ... many times ... but I've never tried to cut the recipe in half.  And that's where things went wrong today. 

 

 

 

I cut the recipe in half, but what do you do when the original recipe calls for 3 egg whites?  I put 2 egg whites in half the mixture, and after beating it for the required 10 minutes, it still did not become stiff.  So I added more icing sugar ... no luck.  I tried putting the pieces of the gingerbread house together anyway ...

 

 

But half an hour later, it still wasn't set.  It might set eventually, but not in time for today's post.  And I wanted to post today because it's Tea Party Tuesday with Sarah.  While I stood there with the beater's whirring away for over 20 mintues(!!), all I could hear in the back of my mind was my husband saying "Stick with what you know". When I'm rushed and feeling a little under pressure, I really shouldn't try something new.  It almost always flies back in my face.

 

 

At least the cookies turned out well, and my family will enjoy eating them.  Here's the recipe if you'd like to try them yourself.

 

GINGERBREAD COOKIES

  

4 cups all-purpose flour

1-1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground allspice

3/4 cup butter or margarine

1 cup sugar 

1 cup light molasses

2 tbsp rum or water

 

Stir together flour, ginger, baking soda, cloves, nutmeg and allspice.

 

In another large mixing bowl beat butter 30 seconds.  Add sugar; beat until fluffy.

 

Combine molasses and rum. 

 

Add flour and molasses mixtures alternately to beaten mixture; beat well.  Divide dough in half, flatten into thick disc.  Cover and chill several hours.

 

On a floured surface (or use icing sugar instead of flour ... thanks for this tip Kathy!), roll dough, half at a time, to 1/8-inch thickness.

Cut out with a 4 to 5-inch gingerbread man cookie cutter ... or ...

Cut into house shapes as follows:

    -  two side walls

     - one front wall with peaked roofline

     - one back wall with peaked roofline

     - two slabs for each side of roof

*See Note

Place on a greased baking sheet.  Bake in 375F oven about 8 minutes or till set and slightly darker around edges.  Remove from oven, and while cookies are still warm, take a sharp knife and trim up any edges that may have become misshapen.  Cool cookies 1 minute on baking sheet.  Remove to rack; cool completely. 

 

***

 

ROYAL ICING

(Dries Rock Hard)

 

4 cups icing sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

3 egg whites

 

Sift icing sugar and cream of tartar into bowl.  Using electric mixer, be in egg whites.  Beat for 7 to 10 minutes until thick enough to hold its shape.

Makes 2-1/2 cups

*NOTE:  I make up a paper pattern for my gingerbread house first so that I know the pieces will fit together well when cut out.  Roll the dough out on waxed paper.  Lay the paper pattern on the rolled out cookie dough, and cut around the shapes with a sharp knife.   Transfer the cookies with the wax paper, and carefully remove the waxed paper before baking.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy

 

Kathy of Kathyinozarks is having a wonderful Christmas Basket Giveaway on her blog.  She has some amazing handmade gifts from both her own studio and three of her creative friends.  Be sure to check it out ... you could be the lucky winner of these gifts from all four contributors!

 

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Knitted Santa & Other Christmas Bits & Pieces

Well how is everyone doing today?  I've been rushed and crazy busy this past week getting things made and sent out before looming post office deadlines, but thought I'd take a little breather to say "Hello"

Thank you all once again for participating in my giveaway ... Linda's new table runner is on its way to the UK, and she just might get it by Christmas time.  I'll have to plan these things a little better next time.  I didn't even check with the postal deadlines before I offered the giveaway (silly of me).  Thank you all for leaving so many comments congratulating Linda on her win ... such a very lovely group of friends here ;)

I was out to see my dad on Saturday and put his wreath back on this door.  He was very appreciative of it, and thought it looked great ... mission accomplished!  I just never know anymore which way his thinking is heading, so I was glad he liked the wreath and didn't say "I don't want it! Take it away!".  I dragged a tiny table top Christmas tree out of his closet while I was there, fully intending to decorate it with the decorations I got him last year.  But where the decorations have migrated to is a mystery.  I found lots of tiny butter pats in his desk drawer :[  ... but no decorations.  Maybe I should just hang the butter from the branches. 

 

I love to make up things at Christmas time, but the only downfall to this is the Christmas time crunch.  I used to get all my shopping done before the beginning of December just so I could devote all of December to making fun things for Christmas.  But as your family grows, different methods are employed and we have to adjust. 

Since my kids were babies, my husband and I have taken them into Toronto for a big day of shopping and lunch in a nice restaurant.  When they were a little older, we would take our skates down as well and after we were about ready to drop from exhaustion, we headed over to Nathan Phillips' Square once it got dark (which is about 4 pm in winter).  We tied our skates on and skated on the outdoor rink with Christmas music playing and all the pretty lights in the trees.  One year we even skated with then Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, which my kids thought was so cool ... the Mayor!!  So now my Christmas shopping is not  finished by the 1st of December, and I feel the pressure creeping up on me.

 

This year I've been able to sew and knit my way through November instead.  I have a big parcel of presents to mail out to my brother & his kids in Victoria.  I always like to add a little something handmade to the package since we don't get to spend a lot of time together.  This year I made up a little knitted Santa & am still working on a polar bear ...

 

 

These really are little ... Santa is about 2" tall and the polar bear is about 1-1/2 ".  I've adapted them from the book Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi by Anna Hrachovec.  I pretty much wrote up my own pattern for the Santa, but got the idea from her gnome.  If you like tiny knitting, this book has cute little things in it.  Tiny knitting is ok, but very fussy when you start to add different colours.  These will be present toppers and then the kids can hang them on the tree.  For my brother I made a "sawtooth star" quilted decoration (which you might recognize from the table runner that Linda won). 

 

 

This quilted star was fun to make (still doing a bit of quilting around it) ... and I've been getting lots of practice making the triangles and having them line up properly (I made a larger one for my dad & hung it on his wall).  I told my dad I would make him a wall hanging for Christmas, so now I feel a bit more confident with making these stars to head into that project.  If I get the wall hanging done for Dad it'll be a miracle.  I have all the fabric (I think), and although the pattern isn't complicated, the colour placement can be tricky.  I'll let you know if I can do this ... another time crunch I've placed on myself ... oh boy ...

 

Another little Christmas thing I did yesterday was bleach a pinecone.  I've bleached pinecones before and they look nice & bright against dark green evergreen boughs.  You take an opened pinecone and put it in a container with bleach (I used a yogurt container).  You want the pinecone to be fully submersed in the bleach.  I stuck a skewer in my pinecone and then closed the lid on the yogurt container and the skewer held the pinecone under the bleach.  You could also weight the pinecone down with a string tied around it and a rock or something heavy.  I left it overnight and removed it the next morning.  The pinecone will close up in the liquid, but just let it drain first and you can put it over a heat register to dry it out completely.  Once it's dry, the pinecone will open up again and look like this ...

 

 

 

One year I made a few of these and the kids decorated them by first painting them with clear glitter varnish and then gluing on pale blue and white pom poms.  They looked really cute and "icy" with the non-traditional Christmas colours.

 

Well, that's me caught up (somewhat) ...

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy

 

 

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