Every Christmas for the past 5 or 6 years my little family and I have went to the Grove Park Inn to "oooooooh" and "aaaaaaaaah" over the beautiful gingerbread houses that are on display for the Annual National Gingerbread House Competition. Last year my 11 yr old decided that he wanted to enter a house into the competition. Which I'm all about encouraging my children to participate and try new things but this one I was a little worried about. You see every time we have ever tried to roll out cookie dough and cut different shapes with cookie cutters, the dough never quite co operated like we wanted it too. The dough would get too warm and mushy and when we would go to pick the shapes up off the counter top to place on the cookie sheet the cookies would loose their shape or just stick to the counter. But never the less we gave it a whirl. After leaving the gingerbread dough in the refrigerator for a while I rolled the dough out on my baking stones. That way all we had to do after cutting the shapes out was peel the excess dough off the stone and the house pieces would still be intact. This worked great. WooHoo!
He created a great little house with a lego candy dog house and snow man out in the front yard. He didn't win but he did receive a certificate of participation. Which I think he was quite proud of.
So time rolled around again this year for the competition and not only did my 11 yr old want to compete but also his sister. So this meant double the fun! Six weeks ago we began the journey of creating their masterpieces. I wanted to try a new gingerbread recipe this year. And we are glad we did. The consistency of the dough was much more firm and a lot easier to work with. And I believe the magic ingredient was vegetable shortening. It was amazing the difference. We were able to roll the dough out right after mixing it together without having to refrigerate it at all.
Over the next six weeks we all watched as their houses took shape and became pieces of artwork.
This is the beginning of my daughters house.
This is her finished piece. She named it "Sugar Land" (love it)
This is the beginning of my sons house.
This is his finished piece. He named it "Camp Wazoo!". It is a camp for boy and girl animals.
We made the daring delivery this past Sunday. This is always interesting. Last year I rode in the back of our Land Rover with the house display held between my feet. This year however there wasn't enough room for me to fit back there with both displays so they had to ride on their own. Thankfully they made it to the GPI without any mishaps.
We haven't found out if either of them won yet. We will make the trip back to the GPI to see if either of them have a ribbon pinned to their displays. It really is a fun adventure and perhaps one day I'll get up enough nerve to enter one myself.
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