Monday, December 31, 2007

Gingerbread Cathedral

This Christmas I wanted to make a Gingerbread House. For Thanksgiving our family in Washington got together to build the houses together. I, of course, built mine from scratch using a template I found online. (here)But either the templates were off or the recipe I had was off. The result was a poor example of a gingerbread house. (I'll upload the picture when I get back home.)

In California at Erin's Mom's house I knew I would have some time to find a good template and a good recipe to make a great gingerbread house. I tried another template from the site referenced above, but the pieces didn't even line up in the cutouts, and everyone else's templates were too simle. Four walls and an "A"-frame roof is too boring for me. I decided to make my own. With a pencil, paper, ruler and some foam board I started to create my masterpiece for this year.

Cathedrals have great shapes and are usually very ornate, so that made the perfect idea for my house. After designing the church (loosely based on St. Pauls Cathedral in London, England) I needed to find the right recipe. I lost the recipe that I used on last years gingerbread house After going through two not-so-good recipes, Erin's mom found a great one. I was a little discouraged that I wouldn't be able to make the house because it was taking so much time, but finally I was able to get it done.

The resulting structure stands at over 1 foot tall with the Point of the cross at 20½ inches. The footprint is 12in by 17in and consumed two full batches of dough. Next it needs to be decorated, probably by Erin's mom. And lit up. I cut out places in the bottom to install lighting.

For more pictures, visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/joshua.hardwick/GingerbreadCathedral

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5 comments:

Rachel said...

Wow, that is truly amazing! Great job!!!

Jay said...

Hey, that's impressive! That's some serious dedication.

Tara said...

That's amazing! We made a gingerbread house with my neice, but it was one from a kit. And even that was complex. Of course, all Payton wanted to do was eat the candy decorations. But it was still fun.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your pregnancy!!!!!!!!!! What a blessing!! - Nicole Jones

Anonymous said...

Beautiful job! how did it taste? :)
Can I please make a blogging request? Could you please show us some photos of the new mommy to be? I can't wait to see some good tummy growth (it's the only time in your life when you are excited to have an expanding waistline, after all).