Gingerbread Adventures

Making gingerbread houses is one of my favorite childhood Christmas memories. But somewhere in the years since my childhood, my mom lost her recipe and pattern. Last year she finally found them again and made one with my boys at our house before Christmas. I mostly stayed out of the way, but she gave me a copies of the recipe and pattern. This was the first year I tried making one on my own. I baked it and glued it together with the royal icing one night and found half of one section of the roof broken off when I woke up the next morning. My kids almost got blamed for breaking it before I realized what happened. I think I just didn't bake the gingerbread long enough to get it hard enough. After repairs with more icing and an inedible piece of cardboard, we rescued it, decorated it, and used it as a centerpiece for our ward Christmas party. I thought it turned out pretty well, after all. Here's a picture:


About the same time we needed to do the gingerbread house for the ward party, Adam had an assignment in 3rd grade to make a model of an American symbol. He chose to do the Liberty Bell. His teacher said if they made their models out of something edible, the class could eat them after their presentations. So after our gingerbread house, we ended up making a gingerbread Liberty Bell. Jeff was the mastermind behind getting the circular layers of the bell cut to the right diameter to shape the bell. (I was in awe of his math skills, which are usually pale compared to his verbal skills. There's a reason I keep the checkbook in our family.) We only had to smooth it out a little with the icing. There wasn't room for the whole inscription, but we did what we could. Adam did very well on his presentation also, and got an A for the whole project. Here is the finished product. Not bad, huh?