To start I took a tray (You can use any cookie sheet or flat surface tray you have available) and covered it in tin foil. I then mixed icing sugar and water to get a base layer of "snow" and covered the bottom of the tray with it. Once it dried enough on the surface I sprinkled layers of dried coconut, icing sugar and sugar to get a textured snow look. The snow hills are just icing sugar with small amounts of water added to get the hills to form.
To make the trees I used wax paper and shaped it into cones and used icing. I piped the icing onto the paper to make it look like trees (Next time I would use royal icing instead of regular icing as it never fully hardened and the tree points broke and smushed in when I tried moving the trees). The shrubs were made of small dipping sauce containers with icing over them. The tree in the far right is gingerbread cut into a tree shape and piped with icing. To get the snow look I sprinkled them with coconut and sugar. Again, I have no real decorating experience and all my techniques were trial and error and what I thought looked good.
My gingerbread house assembled. I used a gingerbread recipe I found on the internet (Will get it and put it on my blog). I cut the shapes before I baked the gingerbread and let them cool before assembling the house. I used royal icing to keep my house together (Will provide the recipe for this as well). Also, before assembling the house I did the big decorations on the sides so it was easier to do then trying to tackle it while they were standing vertical.
The gingerbread tree was placed on the back of the house. An attic window I made. The roof is tiny marshmallows iced to the roof. After they were dried on, I took food coloring (copper and black) and textured the roof to a color I thought looked good. I made more small details by piping icing along the edges of the roof and along the top.
The ice lake I made. This was accomplished by melting water and sugar in a pot (be very careful you don't caramalize the sugar and cause it to turn brown) and adding blue food coloring to it. I allowed it to harden before putting it in the snow. Luckily the snow base was still soft and allowed me to carve a hole into it so the lake could be placed into the snow instead of just resting on top of it.
For the windows I melted candy canes (melt at 350oC for roughly 5 min or until melted) and let them cool. I had to be very careful in shaping them to the square shape I wanted (I bit the sugar pieces to get the shape I wanted, and yes I know this isn't food safe but this house isn't meant to be eaten). Once shaped I iced them onto the side of the house, then piped green icing around the edges to give it the window outline. I used black licorice as shutters. I did the same thing for the round attic window seen above, except I used a round candy shape instead of a square one, and did a fancier window outline.
These windows were built into the sides. I made cutouts before I baked the gingerbread. Once cooled, I placed small pieces of candy cane into the window holes and allowed it to melt to create a stain glass window effect. Again, using licorice shutters.
Here is the finished product of my gingerbread house. I used oreo cookie crumbs to make a path leading from the house. I added a couple of snowmen, 2 candy canes on either side of the front door, and a chocolate fence. To make the chocolate fence I just melted chocolate chips and piped them into the shape i wanted the fence to be. I used parchment paper and let the chocolate solidify before I peeled the fence pieces off and stuck them around the perimeter of the house.
Here is a close up of the front of the house and the stain glass candy window. I added icicles to the edges of the roof by melting sugar and water. I wanted more of a clear icicle effect, but this is how the sugar ended up hardening. So I just used hardened sugar that looked like icicles and iced them to the edges of the roof.
Side view of the house.
Snowman. To create the snowman I used 2 large marshmallows. For the face I used black food coloring to make the eyes and mouth. I used the end of a toothpick in orange food coloring to make the carrot nose. The arms are toothpicks in brown food coloring. The red buttons are just a toothpick dipped in red food coloring that was poked into the bottom marshmallow. I then iced the head marshmallow to the bottom one and added an icing scarf. For the hat I cut a large marshallow in half and dipped one half in black food coloring and icing-ed it to the head of the snowman. Then I took a small marshmallow and dipped it in black food coloring and icing-ed it to the bottom piece of the hat. I then Icing-ed the snowman to the snow. *I used royal icing to cement all my pieces to the tray or to one another. Royal icing hardens while regular icing only hardens on the surface leaving the middle part to still be soft (better used for decorating edible objects)
Right side view of the house
Finished product!
No comments:
Post a Comment