Happy New Year! It's time to catch up on some holiday baking.
We did not make a gingerbread model of our own house this year, but I did experiment with gingerbread in other ways.
First were these gingerbread cupcakes.
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| Gingerbread cupcakes with browned butter buttercream and cookie toppers |
Another hit recipe from Half-Baked Harvest. The browned butter frosting stole the show. I'm keeping that in my back pocket for other cakes.
I happened to have a boxed gingerbread mix (It was for Ninja Bread Cookies we didn't make with the niblings), so I whipped that up to make tiny gingerbread men for topping the cupcakes. It was a satisfying and manageable balance of from-scratch and from-box.
As you might imagine, just a baker's dozen of little gingerbread men doesn't deplete an entire batch of gingerbread cookie dough. I saved the leftover dough in the fridge until I decided to make...
Mini gingerbread houses for decorating mugs of cocoa!
Under construction - pieces of mini houses waiting as icing dries (and yes, some broken pieces, too)
I've seen these cute garnishes in catalogs, but I thought it would be fun (and far more economical) to make them myself. There are plenty of templates online you can copy, and it's not difficult to draw one yourself. All you need are two walls with triangular tops, two rectangular walls, and two rectangular roof pieces. Remember that both the front and back walls of the house (the ones with peaks) should have a door -- the two doors create the slot for the rim of the mug.
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| DIY IRL - Clumsy little gingerbread houses for garnishing mugs |
I'd recommend a thick royal icing for constructing your little houses. I used the runny, takes-forever-to-harden, easy-mix icing that came with the boxed cookie dough, so my house construction took patience. Hours and hours of patience. I clumsily fit together the four walls and had to hold them in place for half a minute before they would precariously stand on their own. Then I had to allow each house frame to sit and cure before I could come back and add the roof pieces, which then needed their own time to cure before I could safely pick them up and decorate them. In the end, the tiny houses were kind of messy, and I ultimately ran out of care for any more dainty decorating. I reached the "good enough" stage, and decided I'd had all the fun I wanted.
And it was fun; I'm glad I tried it. And maybe I will make them again, but I will make my own icing for better control of the assembly and decorating.
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