Home Made Ginger Bread House

A few weeks back S and I were in a grocery store, and saw a gingerbread house kit for sale. Of course, I wanted to get it. S said that those kits were lame and that he always makes his gingerbread houses from scratch. Well, I soon found out as we struggled to make templates and cut the gingerbread, it was actually his mom that always made them from scratch, not him. He also forgot to mention that this was years ago and his memory of how to make them was less than fresh. That being said, it was still a great idea and I am grateful for S and his creativity, open mind, craftiness, sense of humour, and just for putting up with me in general :) .. okay I am cheesy I know.. I'll stop now.

Anyway, we managed, using this site as guidance. We baked the gingerbread one day, got the candy another, ate all the candy (mostly me), bought more candy, and finally built and decorated the house. I'd say this took place over about a week or so. Hey it was a busy time. We  also baked a few extra gingerbread pieces and put together gingerbread house kits to give as hostess gifts and I had some fun designing printouts with the icing instructions with this cool program Canva that S told me about. 

I won't re-post all the instructions as you can follow the ones from the site. I would however advise you to let the icing thicken for a bit in the fridge, as it can be unwieldy if it's too thin. Also have patience and use glasses (or other props) to hold up the walls of the house while you let it dry. 

Under construction it looked like this:

we were a bit skeptical but kept at it. We ended up with this:

Kristin sent me a photo of the one she and Shawn made:

Looking good!

What's next?

Key Lime Pie

I  have not been cooking or baking much lately. Life has been go go go and I have been catching meals where I can and haven't been in my own kitchen too much. It seems like once the weather warms up and spring hits, there is just so much to do. This was a long cold winter, and I am glad we are starting to see the light..

On that note, nothing says summer like a key lime pie. Tamara asked if we could make one to surprise Matt for his birthday. It was easy enough to make, and went especially fast with two people. We were a good team and it didn't take us long. The recipe is inspired by Ricardo's recipe.

The only labour-intensive part was squeezing the juice of all the little key limes. One cup of  juice is a lot!

our hard work

Tamara prepping the graham crust

The crust and filling 

Lighting the Candles

Happy Birthday Matt!