Raising Our Kids in America...: Holidays

Monday, December 28, 2009

Merry Belated Christmas & Daring Bakers Challenge - Gingerbread House

Merry Christmas from the family! :)

Monkey 1 and Monkey 2

It's been a crazy and hectic month! Time seems to fly at HIGH SPEED when it comes to year end, doesn't it? Well, I'm once again late for posting my Christmas wishes to all of you AND for my Daring Bakers challenge (don't think THIS is ever gonna change! :P) Anyhow, I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Holiday!! =)

This year, I didn't feel as excited as I usually did....I think mainly because Nd (Lee) had to travel to Taiwan for work for the first 2 weeks of December. However, I have also notice that usually by the time we get to Christmas, I am already so exhausted with the kids' and Nd's birthdays, Thanksgiving and all the school parties. However, I am glad that, at least this time I wasn't late in the holiday baking. I managed to deliver all the treats to friends and neighbors the weekend before Christmas! Woohooo!!

Before I forget...
The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

So, Gingerbread House made from scratch was the challenge, and boy, was THAT a TRUE challenge for me. We have only made gingerbread house ONCE, and from A KIT. At first, I was all excited, thinking of all the possibilities to decorate the gingerbread house, and that I would make a house for each of the kids, so they can decorate their own, and not mess with MINE! :P I started off by reserving gingerbread house books from the library. It was a little overwhelming ~ what design should I choose? Should I copy from one of the books, or should I make one of my own?? Then came the busy schedule that keeps building up, while I kept on pushing off the challenge. There was a week where we were forecast to have snow (we don't get a lot of snow fall in Portland, Oregon, some years, we don't even get ANY snow), and after last year's Arctic Blast, I was worried we were gonna get snowed-in and nothing to do. So I picked up all the candies --- but which candies to buy? How much do I need? I end up spending twenty something dollars JUST on candies itself, and we didn't even have ANY snow!!! Argghhh!

In short, I end up making the dough 3 days before Christmas ( I used Y's recipe)....thinking I could maybe have it done by Christmas. NOPE ~ THAT was just a thought! I only started rolling and cutting them out on Christmas night. I knew I was late, so I just picked a classic template from Gingerbread Houses: Baking & Building Memories by Nonnie Cargas.

I have read a lot of comments in the DB forum that the dough seems very dry. Mine seems ok, at least that's what I thought...until I started rolling them out. It cracks and tears like crazy! I added water, try to pinch them back together. Sometimes that help, but still it wasn't easy to work with.

Doesn't look too dry, right?

See how it cracks like crazy?

Anyway, I was ready to get it done...I cut out the template, planed on having one house for myself and one house for the 2 monkeys to share. As I was putting up the walls of my house, I realized I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE ROOF!!!! %$#*&#@!!!!! Talk about Challenge!! ~ No problem, no problem, I CAN be Bob Villa .I can fix THAT ~ the kids just have to sacrifice THEIR walls! ;P I trimmed the sides of my walls, and two of them cracked - no problem, just a little royal icing will fix it, and using the kiddos side walls, with 2 windows on each wall, WHICH could be the skylight for my gingerbread house! ;) Pretty proud of myself, I have to say.

See the two "holes" on the roof?? That's the skylight! ;)

However, there's still A problem. The walls weren't tall enough to fully cover the whole roof, so I had to patch the roofs with licorice. BUT before that, my other problem was...I had left the empty jar that I had used to support the walls while the royal icing dries, INSIDE the gingerbread house...and the roofs are already on!!! D-U-H!!!! So, I removed the roofs, take out the JAR, replace the roof, then patched the roof! Hmmm.... I wonder why I don't care about making gingerbread houses...especially from scratch??!!

See the jelly jar in there??? Bet you can tell which brand and what flavor huh?! :P

Anyway, that was really THE challenging parts of building a gingerbread house from scratch. The rest was the fun part, and was up to your imagination :)

Front view

Details on door

Side of house

Back of house

Top of house

Side of house

Despite all the interesting challenges I had, I was glad to have participated. Visit the Daring Kitchen for the recipes and other details in this challenge. And don't forget to stop by HERE to see how other Daring Bakers gingerbread turned out! You might get inspired and make one too! :)

Oh, by the way, there's always the question of to eat or not to eat the gingerbread house. And Nonnie Cargas has included in her book this poem for eating your gingerbread house, which I think is so funny and appropriate...

New Year's Poem for Eating Your Gingerbread House
by Nonnie Cargas

Eating this house so fair and sweet
Brings insight to the year you'll meet
For every bite has a tale to tell,
So eat for luck and wish you well.

If the front door is your choice to eat,
Far-flung visitors soon you'll greet.
But if on the pathway you choose to dine,
A trip afar will soon be thine.

Consume the roof if you want security,
For love and shelter will be a surety.
Tho' if it's adventure to which you aspire,
Devour the windows to achieve your desire.

From the warmth of the chimney true love will come;
A taste of it and a pair you'll become.
Or if, by chance, you're already a pair,
Eating the chimney will recharge the air.

Trees and buses bring money your way,
While lawn decorations bring laughter and play.
Fences bring projects at which you'll succeed,
And people bring kindness and help when there's need.

But indulge in some pieces that aren't mentioned here,
You'll have special surprises throughout the New Year!

Thanks Anna and Y for the challenge and thanks Nonnie Cargas for the great book and poem! :)

P/S Since I have LOTS of left over candies, I MIGHT, try another recipe and make up for the kids.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Happy Halloween!!!

We carved the pumpkins the day before Halloween. Both of them were really excited about getting into the pumpkin. They had fun "cleaning" out the pumpkins. Lucas loved scooping out and stirring the seeds. Yesmin got to design and carve her own pumpkin (I did some "touch ups" for her after that), while Lucas told me what kinda expression he wanted his Jack-O-Lantern to be.

On Halloween, the kids could NOT wait to go trick or treating...It wasn't easy to make 'em sit on the porch for photos, but they did...otherwise, they would not get to eat any candy! =P

If you're wondering what costume they were wearing, Lucas was James the Red Engine, and Yesmin was a blue butterfly that looked like a fly.

We went out with a bunch of the neighborhood kids, they are around Yesmin's age or older...boy, I really couldn't keep up with them, especially having to bring Lucas along, whose costume was still too long that I have too keep on pulling it up for him before he trips over! The kids were as though they were on a "Halloween Amazing Race" mission!!!! Sometimes they even forgot to say "trick-or-treat"....and I wonder if they sometimes remembered to say "thank you"!!! Some neighbors did asked what they had to say first, before giving out the candies! :P Yesmin was really sweet...some house had many steps, so knowing that Lucas was way behind all the others, she sometimes would get one for him, or shared hers with him. She's definitely a way much sweeter sister to him than he is a sweeter brother to her. Hopefully, he'll learn to appreciate her SOON. :)