Bake Me A House

I'm rather enamored with my tiny gingerbread house.

Granted, it is a touch wobbly, the window panes didn't quite get an uniformly even bake, and the roof slates most definitely don't come together at the corners, but it's lovely all the same. The whole process was as Christmas-sy as it could be;  gingerbread dough baking in the oven as holiday movies played, walls and roof pieces cooled while chocolate mints were being made downstairs, and the entire thing constructed to the music of Burl Ives, Frank Sinatra and Sufjan Stevens. I wished I could have taken off work for some sort of "baker's leave" to make it all in one day, but I did make do with making, baking and building the spiced abode in stages. 

For best results, be sure to make your dough in the evening; the bubbling sugar and butter makes the ginger and cinnamon smell delightful. Multitask by sleeping and chilling the dough in the fridge so you are well rested and the dough is thoroughly frigid. That makes for good dough and a good arm work out when you roll things out.  Bake, and embrace the little bubbles that will crop up on your roof, walls, and windows; it won't look anything like Martha Stewart's photos in the tutorial.  Note: You'll use less than half of the dough you make, so envision a massive forest of gingered trees to surround your cottage, or some other sugared and gum-dropped fatality for the remainder.

Now, it's time to build. If you are anything like me, take about hundred photos that won't ever see the light of day, but you've just come to love those four walls, tiny chimney pieces and uneven roof slats so much you can't help yourself.

 

Now, Sunday mornings make for a rather lovely chance to put on an hour or two of Christmas music and ice your little house. It's preferable if snow is falling at this point, but it's not necessary. You can always replicate the fluffy white stuff atop your cottage's roof with some powdered sugar once you've line the windows and piped some shingles (and reinforced the cracks you are nervous about). 

There's a few more days until Christmas Eve, giving you time to create an army of some impressively decorated gingerbread men to leave for Santa. You've got about a pound of gingerbread to somehow dispose of, after all.