What do you get when you combine 6 kids and one Do It Yourself Gingerbread House Kit from Kmart? If you said a delightful family experience resulting in the above gingerbread house, you’d only be partially right. What you would be forgetting is the fun, excitement, giggles, arguing and not to mention the mummy stress involved in such an activity. But I will definitely be doing it again with the kids next year. Despite the little arguments over who would get to decorate which side of the house and making sure I gave each child the same number of lollies to decorate with, everything ran smoothly (she says now!). And I have to say, it’s a great little kit with absolutely everything you need to construct and decorate your house, even the ready-made icing in an icing bag. Totally worth every cent of the $10 I paid, and the kids weren’t worried in the slightest that it came out of a box.
Gingerbread houses seem to be becoming extremely popular in this very hot country of ours with no snow, and several mums at our school even found the time to bake one from scratch for their children to bring in to share with their class at our end of year celebrations. And they were absolutely beautiful! That’s my Christmas baking dream for next year, but this year, due to the usual happenings in the life of a young family of 6 kids, I had to re-think my vision of the perfect Christmas, and decide that it was more important to spend that time enjoying Christmas with my kids than trying to occupy them while I slaved away in the kitchen trying to produce the perfect Gingerbread House. That’s not to say that I won’t be baking at all this year, today while my husband and our teenage son took the younger children to the pool I managed to bake our Christmas Cake, boil our Plum Pudding and make the pastry for our Fruit Mince Pies which my husband will finish off tomorrow. It has become a tradition for him to make the Fruit Mince Pies at Christmas, but this year he asked me to make the pastry. And when he has finished those I will make the Rum Balls and the dough for our Sugar Cookies which the kids are going to bake and decorate on Saturday.
This year I guess it has been about prioritizing, and the Christmas Cake and cookies won out over a Gingerbread House I have never attempted before, but the kids had a hoot, and take a look at what was left after they tucked into it while they watched “The Santa Clause 3” tonight:
That’s another Christmas Tradition of ours, watching The Santa Clause Movies 1-3, Christmas with the Kranks and Christmas Vacation (The Griswold Family Christmas). And when we are not watching movies we like to visit The Christmas Wonderland Lights Display in our Botanical Gardens and The Christmas Tree Festival in one of our local churches. So, looking back I guess we are having our Perfect Christmas, it may not look the same as someone else’s, but it’s the way we are celebrating and we’re happy. So however you and your family are celebrating this year, I wish you all A Very Merry Christmas and a New Year Filled with more happiness than you can imagine.
Rebekah
P.S. For those of you who also feel the whole Gingerbread House thing might be a little over-whelming, but would love to simplify it a little bit and make gingerbread men, here is my favourite gingerbread recipe. And if you want you can try turning your gingerbread men up-side-down and make Reindeer Heads: ice antlers on the legs, the arms are ears, the eyes go on the body, and the head has a little red nose on it. Here’s a link to a page with a photo.
Gingerbread Men
Ingredients:
125g Butter, softened
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar, packed
1/2 Cup Golden Syrup
1 Egg Yolk
2 1/2 Cups Plain Flour
1 Tbl Powdered Ginger
1 tsp Mixed Spice
1 tsp Bicarb. Soda
Icing, smarties and lollies to decorate
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180°C.
Cream the butter and brown sugar together using an electric beater.
Add egg yolk and golden syrup and mix until combined.
Add the flour, ginger, mixed spice and bicarb soda and stir to combine. It might look a bit crumbly, but don’t worry – it works!
Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead until smooth.
Roll into a disc shape and wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to rest.
Place cold dough onto a piece of baking paper and then cover with another piece of baking paper – using a rolling pin, roll out the dough and cut out with desired shapes (kids can help here) re-roll as needed, but keep using the baking paper.
Move the cut shapes over to greased baking trays with a spatula/egg flip and bake for 8-10 minutes.
Once baked, let cool for 10 minutes on the tray and then transfer to cooling rack.
Sources: Taste.com.au and Kidspot.com.au
Merry Christmas!