Belated Happy New Year and Gingerbread House Hack!

I just don't know what it is about the period from the last week of November up until Christmas day but it just gets crazy busy, even for me and my family who don't usually do a big Christmas as both our families live abroad. It just seems like there is a hundred things to do and not enough time to do it. This year we had the added stress of visiting schools and submitting our choices for our daughter who starts school next September. We had until the 15th of January to submit everything but it was just the one thing I didn't want to miss the deadline for.

So, adding that to work Christmas parties, getting all my presents sent to Australia before the last posting date, pre-christmas catch ups with friends, church carol services, etc, etc, made this period super busy for me and then before I could turn around it was 2019 and halfway through January! Basically, what I'm saying is that once again, I've not prioritised writing my blog, but to be honest I think I've got a fairly good excuse this time, rather than just actual laziness.

I decided to make gingerbread for my work colleagues for Christmas this year, a decision based solely on the ingredients I had to hand. There was not enough butter for shortbread and I had no fruit mince for mince pies so gingerbread it was. For some reason, I decided to make a double batch and it made so much dough that I had enough to make 40 gingerbread biscuits and a gingerbread house and still have a quarter of the dough left which I stuck in the freezer for another time!!!

The gingerbread house was made on the spur of the moment owing to the enormous quantity of dough and I was surprised that it actually turned out ok. I just did a rough drawing on a piece of

paper which I cut out and then laid on top of the dough to make all the parts of the house.

When it was baked I trimmed the excess off the sides to make them nice and straight and then once it was cooled I put all the pieces in a container and forgot about it until the weekend. I had 40 other biscuits to ice so I didn't have time to fuss over the gingerbread house.

When I finally got around to finishing the gingerbread house, I kind of started to freak out about putting it together and it holding enough for my daughter to load it up with a tonne of sweets. It was at that moment I had a brainwave. I had some leftover fondant icing in the cupboard and I decided to make use of it. I literally just rolled out long snakes of fondant icing and used it like mortar to stick all the pieces together. I then made up some icing with water and iced along all the joins to add a bit more strength and hey presto, the gingerbread house was up and staying that way!

I let it set a bit before letting my daughter loose on it though.

As you can see from the pictures, its rather amateur looking but it brought a lot of joy to my little girl and that was the main thing for me. In case you are wondering, the strange looking abominable snowman was fashioned by my daughter and not by me. In addition, I can't take credit for the penguin or the snowman, they were bought ready made. Also, I admit, its pretty much diabetes on a plate but we rationed it and we didn't have loads of other sweets and chocolate over Christmas, so, I think we're good on that count!

Anyway, here's hoping that 2019 is a truly blessed one for everyone and hopefully I might manage to post more that one blog every two months!