Gingerbread Project 2021

 

Here we go again! The 2021 gingerbread project was designed by Amelia - Santa and the Reindeer.

We already had the Ikea 3-D Christmas tree cookie cutters - which stand up by themselves and are so simple and awesome. Plus, when I was at Gourmet Warehouse I found gingerbread house cutouts. It all seemed pretty simple.

Of course it wasn’t as simple as I predicted. First I couldn’t find my Santa cookie cutter so I had to draw and cut him freehand. And of course my reindeer cutters were way too small so I had to borrow a template from the internet and cut them out with a knife.

For Santa’s sack I thought it would be easy to make it out of marzipan dyed red. It was easy enough to knead red food colouring into the marzipan but it was surprisingly fragile. I think I was imagining it would be like fondant. Nope. It mostly stayed together with a hope and a prayer.

The trickiest part was getting the reindeer to fly. It wasn’t an elegant solution. It took an actual glue gun to hold the dowels together, but I think it turned out ok.

I had some sort of invisible plastic holders in mind that would suction onto the window. Unfortunately with supply chain issues, the dollar store was sold out. I bought what they had - the last package - and hoped for the best.

I used wire to hang the reindeer. It took a couple of tries and some salty language to get the hooks in the right place, and to get the reindeers at the proper angle and balanced so they didn't flop on their sides.

When the reindeer were in position, it was clear that the very ugly stick-on hooks I purchased needed to be hidden so it was back to the drawing board and baking shortbread snowflakes. I icing-glued three snowflakes to the holders. Of course I because I had baked a whole batch of shortbread I had to eat the rest of them. Not all mistakes are bad.

What I hadn’t bargained for was the weight of the sleigh. The little ugly hooks wouldn’t hold it up - so I used icing to balance the sleigh on a small glass and propped it up with a candy cane.

 This was the second year Julien and I had a friendly g-bread competition. His creations are very meticulous and I concede once more to his superior gingerbread skills.

Julien also went with the sleigh motif. It’s very clever and based on the Grinch.

Krista and the kids created a German Christmas market with very cute cookies that look like a marshmallow snowman has melted. Every time Amelia looked at the cookies, she’d pretend to be shocked and say “Oh no, the snowman melted.” Adorable.

It was hard to get motivated this year but luckily Gjoa spurred me on by sending me updates on Julien’s progress. When all is said and done, I realize tradition is a good thing and this one’s been going for 30-ish years. So thanks to Julien, Gjoa and Amelia for making it happen.

FWIW, here's how it happened:

The Mock-up. So far, so good.
Notice the Ikea tree cutters on the right. They have slots that match up and make the trees stand by themselves. Magic!

I like to roll out the dough on parchment. Then when I cut out the pieces I remove the extra surrounding dough and slide the whole shebang - parchment and all - onto the cookie sheet.

All the pieces ready to go.

I cut extra reindeer, sleigh pieces and Santas. Just in case one breaks. Or more likely someone eats one.
I also cut holes in the house fronts so I could melt lifesavers and glue an opaque window on.
The right way to do this is immediately after the cookies come out of the oven, you cut out the window, sprinkle crushed Lifesavers in the hole and put it back in the oven for a couple of minutes. The candy melts and the window is an integral part of the house.
Unfortunately I forgot to do that, so I melted the candy and glued it on the inside. More of an afterthought.

Amelia had a lot of fun decorating the houses.
And she put candles in every window.

Cocoa powder added to the icing made a very nice brown reindeer colour. And the chocolate with gingerbread is yummy!

Originally I was going to use straws to link the reindeer. However, I ended up using wood dowels because the cookies were sooo heavy.
I also originally thought it might be cool to have reins made of red licorice but it didn't work. Had to eat it instead.

Santa turned out ok after all. Even put on little gold sprinkles for a belt buckle with tweezers.

The sleigh was fun to build. The candy canes could have been longer but they're ok.

After cutting a circle, a bit of sculpting was involved to get the bag shape.
The top had to be big enough to hold the "presents" which are Quality Street candies.

I loaded the sleigh with marshmallows to hold the santa sack high enough
and also so Santa didn't get hidden at the bottom of the sleigh.

Amelia made a very cute little Rudolph.
In fact I'd say her reindeer is better than mine.

Of course we also had to add a puppy for Amelia.
Santa's presents look very festive, don't they?