"
Hogsmeade looked like a Christmas card . . . the shops all had gingerbread house roofs . . . "
Gingerbread has always had a magical quality to it. There is something about gingerbread houses, especially, that warms the spirit --- an element of pure joy, of whimsy, a fairy-tale quality straight out of Hansel and Gretel, and of the kind of fluttering expectation only holidays can bring. What quite compares to the magic of creating a tiny, special, indeed enchanted, space in the physical world using only candy and cookies?
Traditional A-frame Hexenhaus
They may resonate with us on so deep a level not only because ginger is literally a warming medicinal herb that acts as a tonic directly on the gut, but because the tradition of gingerbread buildings also goes back a long way, to the mid-1600s at least.
Easter seems like an odd time for a gingerbread-related post, but that's because now isn't when I started my gingerbread structure for this past Christmas --- it's when I finished it.
How cute is this one?
Yes, please. And a mug of black coffee.
This was only the second time I've ever made a cookie building, and because I'd planned it all out in my head and baked all the parts for my specific layout, I wanted it to be perfect. Which means I needed a big block of time to work on it, allowing for mistakes and experiments in things like icing texture. Which means I kept putting it off. Working night shifts, and being fagged out for half the following weekend, decidedly did
not help.
This one has a delightful outside-the-box creativity, not to mention cosiness!
But cookies only last so long, even in a sealed tupperware box, and the stakes grew higher the longer I waited. I made up my mind that by hook or by crook, everything was going down --- or rather, up --- that following weekend. Such is my visionary ability, that the structure of the finished goal remained clear in my mind.
Sweet classic cabin with a wonderful and realistic shingle roof
I have nothing against gingerbread house kits; I just have more creativity, and I love to run with an idea once I get it! And so this gingerbread building became for me a symbol of commitment and follow-through --- a representation of every dangling project, every unfinished novel or piece of artwork, every idea-in-waiting . . . in short everything that I, should I latch on with the tenacity of a pit-bull and set my mind to it,
could accomplish: An icon of integrity and discipline. I refused to give up.
An inviting two-story country house in joyful lemon yellow
As I geared up to begin assembling my cookie masterpiece according to my vision, I wondered: What's out there? What have others done? I was curious, mainly seeking techniques, decoration ideas I could apply to the candy I'd already bought, and designs for icing. I knew people can do quite amazing things with gingerbread. Still, I was blown away!! A new world of staggering possibilities opened up, as I saw what someone with more resources and time --- I won't say talent, because I have a lot, and am capable of learning a lot, as well --- than I have can conjure up.
So different, and I utterly love them both. My mouth actually registers flavors, just by looking at them: Chocolate for the one on the left, tart lemon, strawberry and bubblegum on the right.
Simple, traditional A-frame houses graduated to charming two-story or otherwise custom-shaped cookie buildings, decorated with flood icing in various colors, intricate designs, or sugar-pane windows. From there, aspirations and inspirations, along with walls, just kept going up.
"Town meeting!" Municipal buildings that place us right down onto a snowy front step
One of the charming aspects of many of these gingerbread buildings is that even in their incredible detail, they are handmade and therefore imperfect.
With basic decorating techniques, this person is clearly branching out in their ambitions. Kastle Norskwonky (tsg.!) uses a confetti of candies, many similar to the kind I got, such as licorice allsorts, and is simply just . . . I love it. The little girl in me comes alive at this
Multi-levels, high towers, turrets and balconies are beyond my project this year, but offer future goals to attempt. Some of the techniques and feats of sugary engineering are incredible!
More towers beautiful detail ~
Can I live here?
Fairly simple but effective: a welcoming city block with retail level, lobby or restaurant below, and apartments or offices above
A hotel or company building with an entire glass skyscraper made presumably of sugar panes! Outstanding, boss! How did that crew manage to do this?
From medium-sized single structures, folks have gone on to depict entire streets made of individual and conjoined buildings, shops or row-houses, complete with lamp-posts, trees, trash cans and traffic circles. The eye, and the imagination if you let it, can wander for quite a while in these scenes. I just feel so joyful looking at them. As though, in the best sense of fantasy, I wish I could visit.
Given enough time for construction, even discrete, isolated gingerbread structures such as a house can be large enough to take up half a real living-room. Here are a number of examples. Some magic simply needs no words.
Disney gingerbread house
Look at these beautiful windows!
University buildings
Thus is the wonder of gingerbread! Within limits, it can be employed to manifest almost any architectural vision, or at least a simplified semblance thereof, that a person might have.
A Canadian bakery exemplified this power when they crafted one of the most beloved institutions in recent times, fictional though it may be. Our exploration of its buildings, hallways and crannies may have happened all in our heads, but that in no way prevented Hogwarts from being real. Its gingerbread version is huge, intricate and just as inviting as its literary one:
This masterpiece is quite large, able to nearly hide a pair of Muggles:
Complete with Hagrid's hut.
Hogwarts can be made in gingerbread on a smaller, simpler scale, of course, for us amateur kitchen wizards. This one is more my speed.
Speaking if Hogwarts, I couldn't look up gingerbread magic without checking for manifestations of my favourite grumpy teacher. While actual gingerSnapes were rare, edible Snapes pop up quite frequently on cakes. Here are some noteworthy examples that just might garner an Acceptable:
This one looks suitably irritable. Must've just had first-year Potions:
Love the cauldrons.
"Mister Potter. . . ."
Then there are those folks who just. . . . do their best. Not everyone is a wiz at creating a building out of cookies. Nor do they need to be. The process of creation and having fun are all that counts.
Many of these bruisers will be kits, but not all of them. The one above looks like it's from scratch.
"Earthquaaake!"
Good gods. What happened here? (below) Looks more like a marshmallow factory had a meltdown.
The extravagent confections of multi-story brilliance may cause us to ooh with awe, but it's these major fails that speak to our common humanity and warm us with humor. We all suck at something!
Honesty both hurts and heals.
A common meme advises that in the event of total meltdown, adding a dinosaur (or monster truck, transformer etc.) can save one's face by making it look intentional. Completely convincing, of course. We know the story!
Just add dinosaur
At the last, somewhere between magnificent edifice and epic shitpile, you have my creation!
Long after starting it, I looked online to see if anyone else had a similar idea. Why, sure they did --- and they pulled it off a lot fancier than I did. But she also had more time, and is a professional confectioner. This wonderful rainbow candy factory is the closest thing to mine in function, if topping it significantly in form:
Then you have mine.
Can I go to work here every day instead?
Somewhere early on, fueled by my own nostalgia and knowledge of history --- and no doubt in part because I work in a similar kind of place --- I got a wild hair up in to make . . . a factory, the type with a machine shop, and some kind of visible power mechanism.
Little Gingerbread Manufactory
machine shop, mill and forge
When I went to Winco a few months ago to get candies to decorate it with, ideas exploded. A factory it would indeed be, but not a modern one: This would be the traditional, small family business of old, the kind that once cranked out everything from wool to machine parts to handmade gifts and chocolates, depending on its internal works. It quickly expanded in my mind to include a forge or foundry, and aha! I could make the foundry out of black-dyed gingerbread, with dried mango slices as flames! Why not some carts, with jelly sour fruits or licorice rounds for wheels!
Inside the main shop, two gingerbread and candy "machines" are visible. I can almost hear the thumping hum of motors and flatbelts, and smell the oil. And the carts turned out precious. Look at those floppy wheels! Lmfao.
These, related by blueprints only in my mind, were the pieces I was steeling myself to assemble this weekend!
The gingerbread was still perfectly sound. But as I'd suspected, the candy windows had long since grown sticky and soft from air exposure, and some had run out of the frames entirely. I had, as they say, no time to lose.
A massive wheel on one end suggests this place is water-powered: Until coal and electricity came along, water was employed via gravity to drive various machines using cams and shafts, since Medieval times. The wheel came out beautifully, with its licorice center hub, and the "water" (blue candy rocks). Nice spokes --- Jujubes, lol!
Finally I began, mixing up the royal icing, smooshing it into a cake cone. All baking, icing included, is a type of potion-making or chemistry, where things go right --- usually --- if you follow the formula. It was easier than I thought; many things are. Even so, it took a little while to learn the constructive benefits and limits of gingerbread!
A good view inside, showing the candy-pane stained glass windows, and the machinery. Back in old times, multiple machines would be driven by a single source of power, using a main drive shaft and leather flatbelts.
To drive the machines, I installed "flatbelts" made from sour gummi tape! The biggest challenge was getting the icing to glue on the tape until it set up. To attach both the pulleys to the wall and the tape to the pulleys, I had to prop the assembly up with small glass jars. But it's so fun to have even one tiny belt system in there!
Now, why does this cookie building resemble Dad's shop so much? Hmmm. . . .
