Cooking with a Sparkle: The Adventures of Sparkle and the Gingerbread House

Once upon a time, a young lady named Sparkle decided to make a fabulous gingerbread house.

She woke up on Saturday morning and said to herself, "today is the day!". After doing a spot of Christmas shopping and seeing the new Harry Potter at Dendy Premium Cinemas, she and her man friend Pie set off to seek some extra ingredients needed for this fabulous gingerbread house from the horrible Woolworths.

As Sparkle was scanning the aisles for Molasses she realised that it was nowhere to be seen. Sparkle ingeniously enlisted the help of a very lovely Woolworths employee who for a good 5mins tried to help Sparkle find the elusive Molasses. Finally, after deciding there was no Molasses at the horrible Woolworths the lovely lady employee said quietly "why don't you try Coles instead".

So off Sparkle and Pie trotted to the nearest Coles. But do you think they could find Molasses there either? NO! Of Course Not! So once again, a "not as friendly employee" helped Sparkle and her man friend out and finally the Molasses was FOUND! Bizarrely in the health food area......

By this time it was almost 6:30pm but Sparkle was determined this house was going to at least be cooked before she got some beauty rest.

Armed with a gingerbread house recipe and template from the very awesome http://www.gingerbread-house-heaven.com/, the always reliable Charlotte (the kitchenaid) and Sparkle set to work.

Gingerbread House Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup of butter, softened
1 3/4 cup of packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons of dark molasses
1 1/4 cup of granulated sugar
6 eggs
6 cups of all purpose flour (+may need extra to get consistency right)
2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon each of ground ginger, ground cinnamon and allspice

Method

1. Cream butter and sugars. Stir in eggs and molasses
2. Sift all dry ingredients together separately
3. Mix the dry into the wet ingredients just until combined. Don't over mix
4. Knead dough on floured surface until completely combined
5. NOTE: if your gingerbread is extra sticky, you will likely need to knead in extra flour in small amounts until he consistency is right. I recommend doing the next step (refrigerating) before getting the consistency perfect with flour. That will help with much of the stickiness. Humidity and room temperature can make a big difference here, so just plan to add flour until it becomes less sticky. And, of course, flour your hands before kneading or ANY gingerbread will be sticky!
6. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour (overnight is even better).
7. Roll out dough on a floured surface. You are looking for about 1/4 inch in thickness.
8. Use your cardboard cut outs to help you to cut out the right sized parts for the gingerbread houses.
9. bake on buttered cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes on 160 degrees Celsius or until slightly firm. Cool completely.

Instead of kneading, Sparkle just stirred the dough. At the time she thought she was doing the right thing but as she now writes this story she is thinking, "whoops, i didn't knead the dough, oh well". Needless to say, the dough was very tough to stir, please note look on face.

Sparkle trying hard to mix the dough

Dough to be refrigerated

1/3 dough rolled out onto baking paper with Roof template

Roof's cut

Front and side walls

Sparkle worked long into the night (around 10:30pm, on a Saturday night mind you), slaving away at the walls of the gingerbread house. Once they where all cooked and cooled, lovely Pie put all the pieces into a container ready for the assemble-ment on Sunday morning. zzzzzzzzzzz

Sunday morning came, Sparkle so exhausted from the night before slept into 10am! She had a busy day ahead of her which included erecting a house made entirely out of cookies (basically) and then catching up with her wonderful girlfriends for a spot of dancing at Brand Depot. Of course a stop at the Lorna Jane outlet would need to be had also so Sparkle was in for a big day!

To start with, Sparkle put on her fabulous top which was made for her by her lovely friend Janette Lenk the designer and mastermind of T-Heinrich (check out her blog here..http://t-heinrich.blogspot.com/), and proceeded to make her first batch ever, of Royal Icing (with the help of Charlotte of course).

Royal Icing

Ingredients

1 pound (250g) of icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3 egg whites

Method

Beat slowly until stiff peaks form. Put icing in a pastry bag or plastic bag with a hole cut in the bottom corner to act as a pastry bag.

Sparkle was excited because this was a very easy recipe! She didn't have a piping bag so she put the icing in a zip lock bag and cut a hole in the bottom corner.

Royal icing in zip lock bag

Sparkle then proceeded to assemble the gingerbread house with help from Pie.

Sparkle and House

Finished!

Sparkle finished the gingerbread house! But she was left underwhelmed. You see, Sparkle had very grand ideas for her house and although the house stood up and stayed up and all the lollies stayed on she was a bit sad. This particular house, to be honest, wasn't very hard to make at all. And Sparkle was looking for a challenge. Sparkle did love her house and was very proud of herself for making it but she decided she would most likely NEVER make another one ever again.

The house took around 5 hours to make and all she wanted to do was eat the bloody thing, so she took it to work on Monday......

Sparkle took her gingerbread house to work and proclaimed to everyone that at morning tea she would put her fist through the roof of the house, stating "I made it, i can therefore destroy it!".

With everyone standing around (mostly because they wanted a piece after the smashing had been completed), one last photo of the house that took so long to make was taken.