Gingerbread Men and Women and Houses too
Just because Christmas is over does not mean our LOVE of Gingerbread is over! Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and we cannot think of a sweeter way to your “sweetie” just how much you Love you them then by a vintage / retro Valentine greeting card and how about making a Valentine’s Day themed Gingerbead House. Check back real soon as we will post all kinds of Valentines Gingerbread Houses!! Click on pics to enlarge. These are also referred to as Anthropomorphic greetings cards.
You knew it would happen, Gingerbread Houses step outside of the cute cottage world and go modern. Sure, we still build the fun little houses with the family. Looking like the many children stories that we grew up with.
Some rather creative folks make their Gingerbread Houses look like buildings and houses we know. While others give us a glimse of things yet to come.
We found a small collection of houses that while they are still Gingerbread in color, they are ‘green’ in what they represent. Houses with windmills, houses with recycled water of little blue gumdrops and houses that in the real world are made of bamboo.
This year’s house created by chef Bill Yosses is weighing in at 350 lbs. It is actually made from Gingerbread but is then covered with White Chocolate.
From the side, you can see the garden.
And, just for good reference, here is last year’s house. Bo the dog gets to be in with both year’s houses.
Now, the part where you make your own. The first step is to get your hands on Yosses’ recipe. Which, lucky for us this year, he has shared!
The basic ingredients are what you would expect:
8 oz (2 sticks) butter, soft
2 cups dark brown sugar
2 eggs, large
1 cup molasses
7 cups All Purpose flour
¼ tsp ginger ground
¼ tsp cinnamon, ground
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Lemon zest from 1 lemon
Orange zest from 1 orange
So we don’t get in trouble here for copying something provided by the White House, your next step will be to jump over to the Obama Food blog to get the order or mixing, etc…
If you have ever wondered about the history and facts of the White House yearly Gingerbread House, the same site has it all, starting with the Nixons.
Update: we were just told about a version of Bill Yosse’s Gingerbread cookies made with Splenda is also available.
No, don’t use your iPad as a serving tray or a plate for your cookies in the oven. This is more about having fun making ‘digital’ cookies on your iPad or iPhone. The application available through the iTunes app store is ‘Cookie Doodle‘.
With the app, you choose your dough, roll it out, choose the cookie cutter, bake and then decorate to make them ‘your’ creations. Your cookies can be saved as an image or sent out with an email right from your iPad and iPhone. One cookie doesn’t say what you want to say? You can create a plate of cookies to share, giving you more oportunities to show your Gingerbread decorating creative side. Grab your copy of Cookie Doodle for a bit of family fun too, there is no charge to make endless number of cookies after the initial 99 cents for the app.
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Don’t have your box of color crayons handy? Not a problem. We found this Web page that has a great bit of fun for the kids. No need to worry about marking up the table cloth when a pen goes wide off the paper. This interactive color site has a fun Gingerbread Man that kids of all ages (yes, that means us too!) can color between the lines using their computer. There is a wide variety of color choices so no two finished pieces of art will look the same.
If you want to keep the creation, a print feature is provided for too. The default printing looks like a full size page of paper so the Gingerbread Man will be enjoyed by many.
There are many other holiday coloring outlines available, so there is something for just about everyone.
Boy and Christmas Tree
Boy with Christmas Tree on Sled
Christmas Bells
Christmas Candles
Christmas Carolers
Christmas Poinsettia
Christmas Puppy
Christmas Stocking Coloring Template Outline
Printable Christmas Tree Template Outline
Christmas Tree and Chair
Fireplace with Stockings
Gingerbread Cookie
Gingerbread Man
Letters from Santa
Old Fashioned Santa with Toys
Puppy in Stocking
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa and Attack Dog Color Game
Santa Claus
Santa Going Down the Chimney
Santa’s Hat Template Outline
Santa’s Reindeer in Snow
Teddy Bear in Gift Box
Trimming the Tree Decorations
Sometimes you will find Gingerbread Men and Houses where you weren’t looking for them. Normally, Gingerbread fun items are in with the Holiday area of stores that are general retailers or specialty stores. Who would have thought… ToysRUs?
The fun finds we had are Gingerbread Men, Women and House Stand Ups. These are not little doll size, the Gingerbread People stand 44 inches tall and the House is 60 inches tall. These are available directly from ToysRUs’s Web site. I have included links to the pages I found, not sure how long they will be good or if these are regular year round offerings.
Gingerbread Man Standees – Set of 2: The set of 2 freestanding Gingerbread Man stand at 44 inches high x 33 inches wide and are made of cardboard.
Gingerbread Man Standee (Not sure if this is the house or just a even ‘bigger’ Gingerbread Man): The Gingerbread Man stands at 60 inches tall and made cardboard. Assembly is required.
Gingerbread Wall Graphic: Decorate your walls with our Gingerbread Wall Graphic. Just peel and stick the removable decals to your wall to add some fun to your holiday party.
We have to admit we didn’t know about this annual event. But, some friends where buzzing through and took some pictures to let us know what we were missing. There is some real talent at Gingerbread House building in Fort Concho! Great job to all 28 house builder entries this year.
If you would like to know a bit more, there are two local TV station mentions worth a look. This one is about a San Angelo family and their yearly get together to put their contest entry together. And another TV News video on the competition… it’s great to see so many folks joining in to do a local event like this one. There was some very loving work put into so many wonderful creations.
Here is one shot from the Jackson Family… be sure to visit their site to see many more pictures they took of the houses on display.
For the many of you that suffer from peanut, tree nut, wheat, gluten, soy, egg, dairy, and sesame allergies you can certainly still enjoy your Christmas and make a yummy Gingerbread House to be proud of! We found The Allergen Friendly Gingerbread House kits from A & J Bakery in Rhode Island. The kits come with a pre-baked Gingerbread House, 5 types of Allergen friendly free candy and a variety of non-edible decorations for your decorating pleasure. A & J Bakery will also include instructions for the construction of the house. The Allergen Friendly Gingerbread House kits are available online or in the bakery store. Cheers!
Gingerbread Women, Men and Houses isn’t just cookie making. There are a lot of fun things the Gingerbread Fan Family can do together. There are many craft ideas online, a few even offer templates and project outlines so there is a lot less resource hunting having to be done. And, I will admit it, they usually cover up my lack of drawing ability with already laid out artwork. Whew!!
Two sites you might be interested in.
“Crafts for Kids” offers a page of fun resources, free for you to use:
Also, a resource for finding craft bits is Etsy. Usually people think of this site as having only completed work created by others. This is a link as an example to Gingerbread bottle cap art bits. You get quite a few for just a couple dollars that will take hours for your family to use as everyone creates their own favorite art.
Last year there was a lot of energy around the Hyatt Regency Austin Gingerbread house. It opened at the beginning of December so we went looking this year and found a few facts… but sadly no pictures! Looking to our friends out there that happen to be in the Austin area to snap a few fun shots.
As a reminder, this display opens on December 1 and shuts down on December 27th. This year they said they would have a new building based on the state capital. Fun!
It took the Hyatt staff over 248 hours end-t0-end and is made from 80 pounds of icing and 35 pounds of candy.
For pictures from last year, here is a Flickr page with many images. As well, here is a post all about what it took to make the 2009 village.
