Friday, December 04, 2009

It's a Gingerbread House! (Updated with some tips)

First I bought this:

It comes in a few biscuits in the shapes of different parts of a house, flat-packed;). After dinner, I had a lot of help to finally put this up. Even the 2-year-old was excited to be allowed to participate. Not so neat, but it does not matter.


One happy kiddo!

And 3 more!

The attack!


The aftermath:

Good easy fast less-messy fun for a very busy mom (and the kids haha). It costs only RM15, some leftover icing and colourful candies! But the kids needed thorough teeth-brushing last night;).

For muslim moms who are not sure of the emulsifier E471 used in the biscuit, I had asked the staff and they assured me that its plant-based. Still not satisfied I sent an email to the company in Sweden and received the answer in less than an hour. So efficient!

Try it, we will definitely do it again! Off course with different designs, and maybe more elaborated with grass and snow...can't wait!

Update
I add just a bit more to share some tips.

If you use melted sugar as the glue, please remember that it is VERY hot!
And it is hardened fast when cooled and you no longer have glue to work with;) ...unless you reheat again.

What I did was, once the sugar melted, I turned off the fire (to avoid the sugar to caramelise (sp?) too much and turn dark), I quickly dip the edge of the biscuit (where I want to attach to the other, you can also use spoon to spread). It may look messy on your house, but you can cover that later with icing. Once the sugar turned stiffer, I reheat again with a very low fire. I added sugar bit by bit (and didn't follow the instruction that says 200g in a go) and keep on doing this till the house completed;).

It is a bit tedious, what more when you have 4 eager kids aged from 7 to 2 fighting to look closer at what mom's doing, and in a tiny kitchen. Easier way is by using glue meant for food, I guess. The one for cake decoration, but I'm not very sure as I've never tried that.

But that's a lesson for the bigger kids, that sugar can be glue. Hubby just got back from golf when the kids were decorating. He asked "How do you put that up?" Bea2 almost jumped to explain. Mama just smiled.

I don't really like the biscuit, too much spice to me. For the next project, I will just use it as a template, and I will bake simple butter cookies.

There, hope that's useful for you, Sizuka and Madre!