Way too early for Christmas but i wanted to practice making a ginger bread house.....here is my learning from the whole experience..will surely make a bigger one in dec. Ever since I was a child, I have been enamoured by Ginger bread houses. The fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel was my absolute favourite and I must have made my mom read it to me a million times. With big puss-in-boot eyes, I would dream of flying through clouds and stopping at a big puffy cloud which had my very own Gingerbread house. It was nice and colourful and was made of jelly beans, candy canes, it had a chocolate fountain in the yard and trees made of cotton candy. No wonder kids sleep so well. I so wish I could dream of things like this now, as opposed to paying the bills and meeting deadlines. Over the weekend I got down to it. With supreme ease I made my cookie dough, brushed up my Pythagoras theorem, and made a grand construction plan with open windows, doors etc. It looked like it belonged in the French Riviera. I shaped my cookie sheets, baked them and decorated them. The next day I woke up nice and fresh . Whistling a tune, I got down to assembling my little French chalet, with icing and the final embellishments. In an hour or so, I was done. My home in the clouds was ready. I took a step back to survey the house and as I surveyed the house, I noticed it was tilting to one side. By the time I could take a step to reach the table, my dreams were being shattered; the clouds were opening up and were sending my house tumbling down to earth. I was devastated and with moist eyes, I just plopped down on the sofa and threw a fit. I felt like the little piggy whose house had been blown away by the big bad wolf with a huff and a puff. With an ounce of resolve that was left, I started from scratch again. The result : The big bad wolf huffed and puffed again and brought down my house . I was so angry and frustrated I wanted to break something but I love all my stuff, not finding anything to break just pushed me over the edge. I curled up into a ball and tried to drown my sorrows in dream land. The next day I woke up with a strong resolve of getting this right once and for all. I sat down with my notepad and pen and tried to figure out what went wrong. They say, baking is an art and a science. I realised the true meaning of this, when I contemplated the reason for my failure. So after much thought and deliberation here is the list of things I did wrong and what I did to correct them: 1) The recipe that I initially used had too many eggs and that was making the dough rise like a cake. So I reduced the quantity of eggs and increased the amount of flour needed for this project. 2) I was not using a straight cookie sheet to bake the structure which is why it had an uneven base. This time, I used the base of my spring foam pans to bake the cookies and it worked quite well. 3) I was cutting out the template on my work surface and then transferring it to the baking sheet. This time I traced and cut the template on the baking sheet. This ensured that there was a straight structure from every side. 4) I was rolling out the walls quite thinly. This time, I ensured it had a thickness of at least 1-1/5 cm 5) And then, the most important thing that I was doing wrong was the baking itself. In India, where there is high heat, high moisture, the conventional baking technique for making the ginger bread house does not work. To make the walls stronger, they need to be baked at a very low heat (120C) for a longer period of time (upto 1 hour). When we bake cookies, they get shrivelled up due to the intense heat. To ensure that the walls bake at a bare minimum temperature, I used a wooden spoon to keep the door of the oven slightly open. This made the walls dry while baking and hence perfectly strong when they came out of the oven. So armed with this learning, I got down to the job again. Sheets shaped, baked and decorated, I started assembling it and an hour later, I was done. I gingerly let go and stepped back. The wolf came, he huffed, he puffed and I replied “ Not this time wolfie, not by the hair on your chinny chin chin.” Ha! I will be frank here, it is certainly not difficult to make the ginger bread house, but it is time consuming. It requires patience and persistence to pull it off. I hope my attempts and learning while making this would be of help to all those who want to recreate this magical little house!
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 16:12:14 +0000
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