Epic Christmas Baking

Getting ready for our epic Christmas feast, Littletree and I spent the day baking. See – I knew it would be a bad idea to introduce her to baking; now she’s hooked. And the worst part is she can read the recipes herself now. Oh, what have I done!?

First things first – making gingerbread dough… because that is the first step in the creation of a gingerbread house.

The dough turned out nicely, and left to sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Meanwhile… we made tiramisu

I love tiramisu, but it’s quite a process to make it all from scratch – lots of different mixing bowls and layers to prepare, but it’s always worth it.

Once that was in the fridge to set, we got out the gingerbread dough and started rolling it out. We discovered a great tip – roll the dough between sheets of baking paper.

I found a nice stencil online for the house shapes, but it was so ridiculously not to scale… that turned into a nice geometry lesson; Littletree had to get out a ruler and calculate the measurements and angles.

Then we discovered that the best way to cut the shapes and transfer them onto the baking tray was to actually leave the dough sandwiched between the sheets of baking paper and cut it out with scissors. Works a treat, and easy to put right onto the baking tray as-is!

After the shapes were baked and cooled, we had the epic mission of making up royal icing (epic because in the humidity, my icing sugar had solidified into a solid rock and I had to grind it by hand with a mortar and pestle back into powder form.

And then came the assembly!

After a quick lesson on how to properly handle an icing bag and nozzle, I stepped aside and let Littetree have at it.

Despite a few sticky accidents learning experiences, she got the hang of it, and the gingerbread house was made beautifully, complete with a cat on the roof.

For some reason, I never took a photo of the finished product… but none of it would have been possible if not for AquaCat coming round to do all the dishes

All set for an epic feast!