photo by KungFoodie

What more could one ask for than a triple apple rum raisin pie to top off your holiday dinner? Not much I say…’cept maybe some whip cream of course. Mmmmm…. How can you beat hot baked raisins soaked in rum? And layers of sweet Golden delicious and tart McIntosh apples coated in brown sugar and butter?

Being that I am a self-proclaimed pie eating addict, I do formally declare THIS to the world’s best apple pie recipe ever!

photo by Look at My Photos

Here’s the great big Kung Foodie collection of gingerbread links!

I’ve spent a number of hours combing the web for the best house pattern links. This is an edited list of the ones I found to be the most unique and/or well documented. The King Arthur Flour website has probably the easiest and most detailed tutorial on building gingerbread houses. If you’re a beginner this is the best place to start.

Unusual Creations

• (Photo) Firquoet’s Gingerbread Star Wars Tie Fighter
  …a new companion to the edible At-At Walker
  (Photo) Rickynils’ Fractal Gingerbread Snowflakes
• (Photo) (Plan) 64bits’ Gingerbread PC Computer
• (Photo) (Plan) NASA Gingerbread Spacecraft

Advanced Patterns

• (Photo) (Plan) (Recipe) Haunted Dimensions Paris Disneyland Mansion
• (Plans, see below) more Haunted Dimensions Homes
  House 1, House 2, House 3, House 4
• (Photo) (Plan) (Recipe) Franky’s Attic Gingerbread Houses
  …a collection of 32 different patterns total!

Traditional Plans

• (Photo) (Plans, see below) Bob Villa This Old House
  Colonial, Saltbox, A-Frame, Side Gable
• (Plan) (Recipe) Gingerbread Lane
• (Photo) (Plan) (Recipe) Martha Stewart Gingerbread*

*recommended by Heidi at 101 Cookbooks

Gingerbread Books

• Christie Currie – Gingerbread Houses
• Aaron Morgan & Paige Gilchrist – Making Great Gingerbread Houses: Delicious Designs
• Joanna Farrow – Gingerbread Houses, Animals & Decorations
• Veronika Gunter – Weekend Crafter: Making Gingerbread Houses

Baking Tips

• Place aluminum foil or parchment under dough before rolling and cutting pieces. You can then easily move the foil/parchment to a baking pan without having to touch the dough. Just start with a fresh piece of foil for each batch.
• Roll your dough thin. Gingerbread will puff up a bit as a cooks. The thicker the pieces the harder it is to match edges, as well as keep your structure from falling apart due to weight.
• If your edges have curled while cooking you can quickly use a pizza cutter to trim them.
• Gingerbread fresh out of the oven is often still soft and can be molded into shape by placing on cans or other objects while cooling.

Frosting Tips

• If you feel safe making a batch of caramelized sugar glacee this holds much better than royal icing as a base mortar (although I wouldn’t recommend this if you have kids helping as it gets very hot and can easily cause burns).
• Make plenty of royal icing* ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than running out in the middle of mortaring a wall or frosting decorations.
• Ziploc baggies are great to use if you run out of disposable pastry bags while piping frosting. The mini sizes work perfectly if you just need a small amount of colored icing.
• Shuna at Eggbeater once showed me a great pastry bag trick during a cooking class she instructed. Just use a clothespin to pinch the cut end of the pastry bag shut if you need to stop in the middle of working. A small spring paperclip would also work (tho it’s not as cool).

* I prefer to use an eggless royal icing recipe which calls for meringue powder, which I get at my local baking supply shop. It’s possible that any store which carries Wilton products will have it as well.

While my first effort with gingerbread house building last year didn’t go exactly as planned, it certainly was memorable and resulted in one extremely large edible dog house (finally consumed amongst a whirlwind orgy of ravenous New Year’s Eve partiers). The poor marshmallow poodles never knew what hit them.

In celebration of holiday sugar-highs I’ve decided to showcase a series of posts on Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about creating your own gingerbread homes. From plans and patterns to decorating ideas, and maybe even a special gingerbread trick or two.

[Related Posts]

• Gingerbread House Patterns

Olive Tapenade
Blue Cheese & Pecan Spread
Carmelized Onion Phyllo Bites
–
Butternut Squash Soup
Mixed Greens with Homemade Garlic Vinaigrette
–
Tubitini Salad
Rosemary Lime Sweet Potatoes
Chanterelle Mushroom & Chestnut Stuffing
Sauteed Brussel Sprouts with Hazelnuts
Roast Turkey & Giblet Gravy
Cranberry Mint Sauce
Cornbread Biscuits
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Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake
German Stollen

I played with a few ideas of creating a really off the top menu but since the evening was about relaxing, having light easy to cook dishes would be important. I decided to use what we had on hand enhanced with some extra goodies from our favorite Thai market here in Berkeley.

The shrimp salad was so simple (just use baby spinach, baby corn, and shrimp) and turned out amazing paired with the lemon dijon vinaigrette recipe I pulled off Epicurious. I was worried that using raw minced shallots would be too strong but it worked perfectly with the Meyer lemons from our yard.