LivSimpl

Each year since I've been married (three) my wife and I have gone to her family's home and, with her brother and sister, have made gingerbread houses. Sure, sometimes they collapse onto themselves, and sometimes my mother in-law is so horrified at our creations that she refuses to publicly display them. But it's been a fun tradition and I feel I've learned a bit along the way.

While my wife and I don't think we're particularly good at this, but we don't think we're particularly bad either. We feel we can hold our own when it comes to edible home construction.

So you'll understand my excitement when a friend of ours invited us over to make gingerbread/gram cracker houses. Thinking back to our three years' experience I wrongly started shooting my mouth off about how we were going to kick their trash and they'd have no idea what hit them and yadda-yadda-yadda.

"Have you forgotten," my friend good-naturedly asked, "That I went to culinary school, am a pastry chef and design cakes for a living?"

Actually, yes. Yes I had.

When the time came to build our various graham cracker structures we all enjoyed ourselves tremendously. We spent hours on our various creations and my wife and I ended up winning the prize for tallest gingerbread house. (It was one of those situations where everybody wins something.)

Why do I share this story with you and what does it have to do with simplifying life, becoming more efficient and/or enjoying the little things?

Not only is it a simple, inexpensive activity to do with friends and family that encourages interaction (versus, say, watching a movie), but I now have a great, very simple recipe (only three ingredients!) for the perfect gingerbread-house-constructing frosting. It's even been endorsed by a pastry chef I know...

The Ultimate Gingerbread House Frosting Recipe*:

3 egg whites, room temperature
1 lb. confectioners' sugar
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar

Stick 'em in a bowl, beat on high for 7-10 minutes and you've got yourself some very strong icing, perfect for gingerbread houses. I mean, if it can hold up the three-story monstrosity you see in the picture above (affectionately referred to as The Peppermint Palace), I'm confident it'll work for you too.

Has anybody else made gingerbread/graham cracker houses? I'd love to post a few so e-mail them in to LivSimpl at gmail.


LivSimpl

P.S. Please don't eat the frosting. It works like cement and tastes about the same.

*As I said, the recipe was endorsed, but not created by my friend. The original recipe can be found here.

UPDATE - If there was any doubt remaining as to the excellence of that frosting recipe, check out this picture:


That's 55 pounds of books piled on a graham cracker house my friends.

And a thank you to Stephanie who sent in some gingerbread house pictures. I'll be posting them soon. Anybody else planning on sending in pictures?

Posted in: Holidays, Home on Monday, December 17, 2007 at