⎨Simple, imperfect & delightful⎬
One day at the beginning of December, I spent a couple hours making my gingerbread house.
Really, I still don’t have the proper tools to make it “perfect”, as I’ve thrown them away in England, but for sure that doesn’t stop me.
Now, I have this wild dream of having a gingerbread house party with my adorable nieces and sister-in-law, that I don’t really have at the moment… but who knows? I’ll let this sweet and tender desire go out in the universe anyway this Christmas, together with this post. And in the meantime, I have fun by myself!
I got a pre-fab house at IKEA, and used a simple disposable sac-a-poche where I cut away the tip to make a small hole. I want to buy a metal piping tip next year, to make things easier.
Differently from the previous houses I’ve made (when I had assembled the house first and then decorated it), this time I started by decorating the walls, and then built the house, and then finally decorated the roof.
To assemble the house I used icing “mortar”, bought at IKEA as well. I tried to only use royal icing, but the house didn’t stay together and collapsed a couple times. This product comes in a tube, and you just have to soften it in warm water for a while.
When the mortar was set, I went on to finish decorating the roof with royal icing.
While we don’t eat our gingerbread house (it stays out in the dust for decorating purposes!), I don’t at all like the idea of making royal icing with eggs (I don’t like cookies where raw eggs were used for the icing, either), so I buy royal icing in powder form at the supermarket where you have just to add water, and you’re done.
It usually comes out thick and fantastic, but this year I unadvertedly added too much water, so it was a bit too fluid. That’s why I decided to decorate the walls before assembling the house.
In England, I used to buy tubes of royal icing ready to use directly from the tube, and that was even better.
This time, I didn’t want to add color to my house, and instead finished it off with a few chocolates and a casual snow dusting.
Of course, as icing sugar tends to melt in a warm environment, my Mom and I thought to use flour. And it worked great!
The icing in these pictures is still wet, but it dried overnight.
I so love my simple gingerbread house!!
Do you make one at Christmastime?
Monica xoxo
Buon Natale Monica. I LOVE love love!! your dreamy gingerbread house. I pretend, at best, to be “crafty”. but, I don’t always master these techniques! The icing, looks amazing with the powder icing. It truly looks like fluffy snow. Wishing you love, peace and joy for 2020. Thanks for making my days so much brighter with your honesty and love. <3 Love, lee
Lee,
Thank you very much for your always supportive and nice words. They touch my heart, and they encourage me to keep going!
Thank you for your beautiful wish! So appreciated. I wish you peace, love and JOY as well, AND lots of laughter and health and abundance and all things “luminous” and good for 2020. Let’s make it a fantastic year and new decade!
Hugs,
Monica xo
P.S. Pretend and practice until you’re not pretending anymore! :)