December Daring Bakers' Part Two!

December Daring Bakers' post two! I took the opportunity to make Y's recipe for Scandinavian Gingerbread into ten miniature houses for a group of friends to decorate at our Christmas party. It proved one thing: put a pile of twenty-somethings in a kitchen with royal icing and candies, and all hell breaks loose!

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.

The recipe made for a very dry dough, and even after sitting in the fridge as directed, it crumbled into a zillion pieces. I ended up having to add some water and a bit more butter to the dough to make it hold together for rolling. In the end, it made the dough easier to work with, and didn't make it any less flavourful.

Putting the houses together took no time, and I think it was very much due to having the royal icing at the perfect consistency. Too runny and the "glue" didn't dry quick enough to keep the house standing; too thick and it didn't actually stick to the gingerbread!

The decorating, though, was by far the best part! We acted like three year olds and generally got icing and candy everywhere! Below are the variety of houses we produced. Overall, fun was had by all of us!