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Smelling Salts Journal

December 13, 2020

Advent Day 13, 2020: Design, Bake, and Build a Gingerbread Structure

Today, we will design, bake, and build a gingerbread structure. Will it be an enormous Victorian? The Al Purdy A-Frame? An Airstream? The Guggenheim? A Replica of our Home? Can’t wait to find out.

We’ll be using the Gingerbread House and Royal Icing recipes in our beloved copy of the Joy of Cooking. [It’s also in the 2019 revised edition! I checked!] This is the recipe we used in 2008, when we last attempted this crazy task! [See the picture below!]

For a free online resource, I highly recommend Sally’s gingerbread recipes and video tutorial.

HOT TIP: Don’t forget to take a picture of yourself wrecking the whole thing with a hammer to ring in the New Year!


AND HERE ARE OUR RESULTS!

The family voted unanimously to immortalize my #wyrdshed in gingerbread! I am tickled pink!

We ended up using the Joy of Cooking gingerbread recipe, with the caveat that we added 2 eggs and a teaspoon of vanilla to the dough. [There was just no other way to make it pliable!] And we used a double batch of the Quick Royal Icing recipe from the same book [as opposed to the Standard Royal Icing] for our “glue” and to attach our decors. I have to say, that both the cookies and the lemony icing taste AMAZING! As much as we NEVER want to take the house down, we might actually WANT to eat it up before too long!

View the 2020 Advent Calendar

Filed Under: Advent Calendar, Christmas, Holiday, Living, Special

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Welcome to Smelling Salts! I'm Roseanne, and this is where I record my best recipes, take notes on arts, culture, and style, and write essays about what keeps me going.
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