Holy cow! First place in the gingerbread house competition! December 8, 2007
Posted by Karen Joy in Celiac Disease, Christmas, Contests, Cooking/Baking/Food/Recipes, Dairy-free, Homeschooling, The Kids.30 comments
I blogged a bit before about our intent to build a gingerbread house as a homeschooling project this week, then enter it into our city’s annual competition. Honestly, we did this with zero expectation of award; our desire was just to participate.
There were three categories — one for kids 12 & under, one for teens and adults, and one for a group. I entered ours into the group category.
I did most of the icing, and I stood up the walls, but the boys did virtually all of the rest of it. They sketched out ideas, read books on gingerbread house-making, they chose the template, they helped make the dough and roll it out, they made decorating design decisions, the did most of the decorating… It really was a group effort. My inner sometimes-perfectionist threatened to rear its head and take over all the layout and correct a gloppy mistake, but for the most part, I let the boys’ ideas trump mine, and I let their glops alone.
We were planning on attending our city’s tree-lighting and assorted festivities (including ribbon-awarding) last night anyways… but when someone from the city called to let me know we’d won first place, I knew we had to get there. It was a bummer, because my hubby was running late, heading home after working for part of the day in a city 40 miles away… so we ended up running up literally just as they were announcing our names. So, the boys didn’t really get that tension/excitement buildup that comes from anxiously waiting to see if your name is called. (I hadn’t told them that we won.)
Still, it ended up being a fantastic night… The ribbon is now quite rumpled from the boys (and Audrey) admiring it.
The house is gluten-free, dairy-free (GFCF), nut-free and peanut-free. I used a cookie recipe I devised, royal icing, and candy bought from Walgreen’s.
Here’s the gingerbread house progression:
Before:
Cutting out the templates:
Audrey supervised:
Cutting out the dough:
The bare house, assembled:
Ethan adds some candy:
I ice some windows:
Knowing that my spelling is an issue of pride, and to keep me humble about both that, and about the house, God saw to it that, in a gingerbread-induced stupor, I misspelled “allergen.”
The house is done!
We’re all pleased:
