gingerbread house with lemon frosting and happy new year!!

Isn't it nice having some time off for a change??

Feeling very lazy these days... can you tell? Only one post a week, if that. It feels good to take some time off, learn ow to use my new camera, (my old one died) and stop running around for a few days. Just to breathe. I hope you are also having a relaxing few days - to recoup, regroup, take inventory.

After reading this book to my son, he insisted on making a gingerbread house - to catch the gingerbread baby, of course. I'd already made tons of gingerbread cookies but my own curiosity prevailed. Would I be able to pull it off? So I realized that I wanted to make a house as much, if not more, than he did.

Here is my sorry attempt. Like with the cookies of Christmas, the frosting was too runny and didn't stick completely, although the house did hold up on its own, defying gravity, for the few moments it was left alone to dry, about 15 to be exact, before we all devoured it completely. It was mighty tasty, since I made the frosting with lemon juice. The lemon and ginger compliment each other nicely.

Gingerbread House
One small house
Use 1/4 of Smitten Kitchen's Spicy gingerbread recipe
You can make cookies with the other 3/4 - or trees and other things to embellish your house.

Cut the following pieces:
2 walls with peaks - cutting a door and windows
2 walls without peaks (far right)
2 roof pieces (bottom) - measure the height and length of the walls for this measurement - and add a bit for the overhang
2 chimney pieces with cut for roof
2 chimney pieces without cuts - these measure the length of the other roof pieces from point to top.

Piece can be any size - so long as they all match each other and so long as you have enough dough for them all.

I cooked the pieces I cut out in case I wanted to use them on the outside as decoration. You can be really inventive - much more than I was. I didn't have a lot of candy for the outside since we planned on eating the final result. I just used the frosting to make a shingle pattern and added some green sparkly sprinkles.

Gingerbread House Frosting
Makes one gingerbread house glue and decoration

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
Juice of 1 small Meyer lemon
1 teaspoon corn syrup

1. Mix sugar and syrup. Add lemon until the mixture is all wet but still firm. My mistake was to use too much lemon. Try it while very firm, before adding more liquid. I think it may stick better that way.

2. Spread on seams between wall and roof pieces. Let sit for 15 minutes. Add chimney pieces, gluing them together and onto the roof. Let sit another 15 minutes.  The drippy frosting looks a lot like snow on the roof, so don't worry about it dripping.