“There was a very nice house, no ceiling, no kitchen….” so it says the famousechildren song.
I feel Christmas… I feel it coming in the air weeks after weeks … before the days get shorter, the smell of roasted chestnuts in the streets , the scent of clementine peels that invades the house (if you try to put them above radiators – it is extraordinary!) .. and then comes the fateful moment of Christmas cookies: to mix, frosting, decorate and give to close friends … what better of the Gingerbread house? But this year I started in advance… I realized a dream that is in my personal drawer since I was a little child: the Gingerbread House…In the our imagination take the shape of fairy tales and Hansel and Gretel. I caught the opportunity of a triple birthday of relatives and friends (in total they were celebrating 126 years !) with a beautiful baby danish two years old girl… so I knew to touch the right button . I need to thanks also Valentina who showed me the cute houses made by her in past year and told me that the biscuit bases ready and cut are on sale from ikea:
Then I started to think how I would have wanted mine and have gone shopping :
- a tube of smarties candies
- a bag of mixed candy and / or mixed liquorice (those with colored sugar)
- a box of silver sugar beads
- some candied cherry
- box of two-colored pods
- Togo biscuits or stick biscuits
- A lot of icing sugar
- few egg white and lemon juice for the glaze (if you click you will find the recipe directly)
- finally sugar, water and lemon to prepare the caramel
Now, armed with imagination and patience, put on the right soundtrack – personally I put an old vinyl famous
soundtracks of the 60s – baking paper on the table and please have everything you need: the frosting inserted
into the syringe for cakes or pastry bag , all the candy and cookies ready to be used.
Despite being a questionable choice I decided to decorate the facadesof the house first and then mount them, because I find inconvenient decorating a vertical wall. The only care to use is to wait for all the decorations are completely dry before mounting everything.
So I started from the walls, drawing the borders and windoes with frosting and decorating them with tufts and silverbeads . Then I applied several smarties using as glue frosting icing and decorating as if they were flowers on the front side.
Once dried, with Nicolò’s help I prepared the caramel to be used as glue to attach the walls of the house . N.B. put the wall together on the final surface (plate or tray), covered by a sheet of parchment paper. After assembling could be risky to transport the house).
Finally I placed and attached attached the roof. I thought the waffles could resemble the mountain lodges beams soI have cutted them and applied at regular distances pasting with frosting. The empty spaces between the rafters were filled by decorations. Finally I covered the top of the roof and the tufts wiht icing edges and beads, which look like snow. You can fin below two different examples for roof decorations.
A little secret … you can create also glazed windows !!!! otherwise the Elf that lives in it will get flu (I told so to my little danish grand-daughter) how to do? … use dry fish glue sheets to be cut properly and glued from the inner side of the house. Finally put a light or candle inside the house and you can look at the illuminated windows.
