Sunday, December 27, 2009

The Daring Baker December Challenge - COMPLETED!!!

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.

Another requirement was that the house had to be edible. I don't know who in our house came up with the idea of making it for all the birds Mom feeds in the front yard, but that is what we decided to do early on. I didn't feel any pressure to make it pretty because it was for the birds. I am happy with how it came out. It isn't beautiful, but I know the birds will love it! I can't wait to check out all of the other gingerbread houses!  I used a stencil I made based on one I found online.  I used the recipe from Good Housekeeping.  The instructions said to roll the dough out to about 3/8 of an inch thick.  It suggested you use wooden dowels to ensure uniform thickness and the right thickness.  I was going to go to the store to buy the dowels when my Mom suggested I use hangers.  She measured them and sure enough, 3/8".  The hangers really helped keep the dough even and the right thickness.  I'm sure my house would have never stayed together if we hadn't used a guide. We had left over dough and used it to make gingerbread treats! They were quite tasty!

Final assembly did turn out to be a bit trickier for us because I did not check or trim my pieces when they came out of the oven.  Then after melting the sugar,  I burned my finger when I dropped the brush with the hot, hot sugar on it.  (It even blistered! :( ) Mom helped out by finishing up the assembly - okay, I didn't have any of it together when I managed to burn myself!  In the end, it was all worth it. 









 
 
UPDATE: Today (12/28) I saw two birds on the house, but couldn't get to the camera in time!

2 comments:

  1. How fun to make it for the birds! Your house looks great =D.

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  2. welcome to the daring bakers! great first challenge with a lot of creativity. i love the rustic beauty of the bird seed. (also you might want to add the blog checking line so you get credit...just trying to look out for you since your new...not trying to be snarky at all). hope that you and your family had a great holiday!

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