A Real Taste of Home

The Holiday's have begun and it is time for us to get creating as we gear up for our first Christmas at 'home' in a long time. Last week I was really excited to find a Gingerbread House cutter in one of my favourite shops called Notre Dame. A homeware, kitchen shop Notre Dame is filled to the rafters with all sorts of wonderful items that either remind me fondly of days gone by, or fill me with excitement at future projects. The subtle brown plastic cutter at 48kr was too good an opportunity to pass by and I have been waiting patiently ever since for the children to finish school so that we could try it out.

I used my new favourite Gingerbread recipe from Trine Hahnemann's, Scandinavian Christmas. Filled with the aromatic spices that we are so familiar with at this time of year, the recipe produces a very crisp, tasty biscuit that is perfect for long lasting Gingerbread houses. We doubled the recipe in the book and took it in turns to mix the enormous bowl of golden brown, clove scented dough. The house cutter is designed to be used twice for each building and in an easy rotation we soon filled the kitchen with edible architecture.

Following a Christmas tree decorating interlude we started making the caramel to hold our houses together. The tricky part was not the construction of the house but trying to avoid burning oneself with the molten sugar *. This I did not manage and the results were less refined than I had in my mind but practice will make perfect one day.

The fun part was the decorating... of course.

Each to their own, it's Christmas and I turned a blind eye to the ratio of sweets to house/mouth as they diligently glued their favourite sweets to the house's using a royal icing. The one rule was that we did our own thing and that no one should feel their house wasn't as good as, or better than another's. A brotherly rule for harmony that I try to adopt in such/most situations. This is where having the two year old decorating his own house came in handy, the four sweets that made it onto his roof in an avalanche of icing set an achievable minimum for the others to follow. Obviously being two he will forget the premature eating of all his sweets when it comes to demolition so we added a few more once he'd left the table. Brotherly Harmony Rule in action, or enlightened self interest? I can take an educated guess.

There followed a very happy hour of conversation, concentration and negotiation. In an unexpected reveal, the flag of St George was flown proudly across the roof of one of our houses. A very timely reminder of the home and family we left behind and all miss so much at this time of year. The finished houses completely represent their proud designers and look lovely sitting up on the shelf safely out of the way of the now sugar addled two year old.

........."Mama, when can we eat them"


* Mum. No grandchildren were harmed during the making of the four Gingerbread Houses. Just their mother who had to pretend that 200 degree molten sugar does not burn intensely as it settles on the fold between the thumb and forefinger. In five minute intervals. Mostly during the chimney construction stage.