The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
I chose the gingerbread from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book, and the only change I made was using white sugar+blackstrap molasses, as I didn't have any brown sugar in the house. This made my dough much darker, but I think it also added a really nice flavour.
This was my first Daring Bakers' Challenge, and of course I posted last night just before the deadline! I had a lot of trouble with the dough--it wasn't dry exactly, but so crumbly and difficult to roll out and drape over the template. My fancy template consisted of a mixing bowl and a toilet paper tube covered in foil.
Here is the dough right after taking it out of the fridge. I had to leave it at room temperature for about 4 hours before I had any hope of rolling it out.
Next, I got it rolled out, but forgot to put it on wax paper, so had no way of getting it off the table. Finally, I got it rolled out, but see how it kept cracking at the edges?
It baked up nicely, without puffing too much, except it took the igloo a lot longer than the reindeer and snowman, so they are burnt. That's what icing and icing sugar are for, right?
Next, I made the blocks out of icing and let it dry overnight. I liked the way it looked with the dark gingerbread and the blocks, but I decided to flood the whole thing with icing the next morning:
My nephew can hardly wait to get his hands on it!
