A Gingerbread House
Those of you following along on Twitter know I was up late (and early) constructing a gingerbread house designed by the Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative last night – a 16 panel über-contemporary single family dwelling made of cookies, royal icing and hard candy windows (made with hot sugar poured into foil molds constructed by Marc himself). I baked the pieces last night and put them together early this morning in the studio with the very-much-appreciated help of Mike DeBoer (one of the MBAC), which required some strategic use of icing and whittling of edges, but it went up, internal stairs and glass courtyard and all.
And a very kind person donated $1000 to the Calgary Inter-faith Food Bank in exchange for taking it home. $1000!
The photos don’t do it justice, really. The whole story, and design specs, will be in tomorrow morning (this morning?)’s Swerve, print edition and online, if you want to play cookie contractor and make one yourself.
Hours of rolling and cutting panels last night taught me (and reminded me of) a few things:
1) mostly, you don’t want to overhandle rolled cookie dough. If you’re looking for structural soundness, as you would with a gingerbread house, you’ll want the opposite – kneading the dough or even rolling and rerolling scraps will give it a dense, smooth, leathery finish that once baked won’t go as puffy or wonky on the edges.
2) you don’t have to worry about transferring (and wrecking the shape of) cut dough pieces if you roll it out on a silpat mat or piece of parchment (placing it on a damp countertop will keep it from sliding around) – cut and remove scraps, then transfer the whole thing to a cookie sheet to bake.
3) you need at least two pairs of hands, and two mugs to prop things up with, to make a gingerbread house.
Classic Gingerbread Dough
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups dark molasses
6 – 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbsp. ground ginger
1 Tbsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. saltIn a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time,then beat in the molasses. Stir together the dry ingredients and add to the wet, beating on low or stirring by hand just until combined. Knead a few times, until you have a soft ball of dough. Cover and let rest for at least 30 minutes before rolling, or wrap and refrigerate for up to 4 days.
When ready to bake, roll gingerbread out 1/4″ thick on a lightly floured surface, and cut into desired shapes – bake at 350F for 10 minutes, or until pale golden around the edges and set. Makes tons.
December 16 2010 | leftovers | 12 Comments »
