The Only Thing Gay About This Post is the Lesbian Who Wrote It
September 24, 2008
Nearly every Christmas I bake between 12-25 gingerbread houses for the children at church to decorate. This year’s theme is Extreme Gingerbread Home Make-Over although I played briefly with the idea of Sugar Gone Wild. I also decided that this year I wanted to extend the invitation to include anyone in the church who wanted to decorate a gingerbread house and so I’m looking at baking about double the number of houses. I have a propensity toward list-making and so here’s how it’s shaping up for this project.
October:
- Buy all the dry ingredients for the gingerbread houses.
- Measure out dry ingredients according to recipe.
- Mix ingredients per recipe and individually bag each batch.
- Store in home pantry.
Note to self: Make space in pantry by relocating the growing pile of pots and pans that are stacked precariously on pantry floor.
November
- Buy all wet ingredients for the gingerbread houses.
- Bake all the sides, roofs, and chimneys.
- Bag by set and pack into our home freezer.
Note to self: Consume 15 pounds of frozen blueberries between now and November to clear room in freezer.
- Buy all the candy.
Note to self: Store all candy in Bulgaria or anywhere out of my sight and reach.
December
- Thaw gingerbread house parts.
- Assemble houses in advance of party.
- Make a vat of royal icing the size of a large jacuzzi tub.
- Have the party. Take photos. As evidence.
- Attempt to wash all royal icing out of my hair. If attempt fails, try that buzz cut I’ve been playing around with in the back of my mind.
Now why, you might ask am I writing about gingerbread houses in September?
Last week while making plans for the fall I got to thinking about last year and how time-consuming it was to bake 20 houses in my stoneware gingerbread house molds. The process for each house is that I roll the dough, press it into the mold, trim the excess and then move the mold to the oven. Fifteen minutes later I remove the baked gingerbread, allowing it to remain in the mold until it’s slightly cooled and hardened. After removing the gingerbread from the mold I must then wait for the mold to cool completely before adding the next batch of dough. Since I only own four molds and two molds are required for each house I could only bake two houses at a time. This process took from about 8:00 a.m. until midnight to complete last year. I was stiff and sore all over for a week and suffered from PTSD every time I entered the kitchen for the rest of the month.
This year with double the number of houses planned I decided to try to get my hands on a few more of the molds. The problem is the molds are no longer being made and so last year while I was able to increase my original mold count from my original 2 to 4 it required winning bids on E-Bay of 45.00 and 65.00 dollars. I wasn’t about to pay that much again and so I went to E-Bay recently and when I saw that there were about a dozen of the stoneware molds on auction, I put a maximum of 10.00 on each hoping that I might end up winning one or two of them.
As it turned out over the past week I’ve had the winning bid, not on one or two stoneware gingerbread house molds, but on each and every one of the twelve stoneware gingerbread house molds I bid on. I never win anything. A store can give away six door prizes and if there are seven customers I’ll be the one who doesn’t win and yet for the past three days the UPS man has been arriving at our front door like clock work with a small bundle of similar shaped and exact weighed boxes from every corner of these 50 states.
I now have enough stoneware gingerbread house molds to bake 8 houses at a time. The only problem is I need a bigger oven to hold all the molds.
Maybe there’s one over at E-Bay I could put a bid on….
Posted in Storytelling
September 24th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Anita, Thanks for the laugh! I had a horrible day at work came home and read this post. It was hilarious, you made my day!!!
September 24th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Christy–> Well, making your day makes depleting my paypal account a little easier to take
September 24th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Ooooo that sounds like so much fun! I used to love doing that but haven’t been able to make a gingerbread house for several years. I never used a mold though. I just cut the gingerbread as it came out of the oven before it got hard.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Wow. That makes me tired just thinking about it. Congratulations on getting the molds, though.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Too funny!!!! Thanks for the laugh. You make things so easy to visualize. Sounds like a lot of fun… well the after you have it baked and standing.. the decorating part sounds like fun. Looking forward to seeing the pics!!
September 24th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I once (notice I said once) tried to make a ginger bread house….. my boys and I decided that it was a ginger bread slum. Needless to say we haven’t tried it again. But thanks for the laugh, I really needed it.
Oh and by the way, you bake ginger bread houses, save queers from sandbox torture, and drink the coffee at Starbuck’s. Is there anything you can’t do??????
September 24th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
your title is pretty much false advertising
September 24th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Janna –> ::::scratching my head:::: Okay, I’m clueless as to what your comment meant but I’m going to believe the best, take it as a compliment, and say “Ah gee, thank you.”
Kelly–> Gingerbread slum. Funny! Oh and what can’t I do? I’ll tell you, as much as I’ve tried, I simply can’t polka for the life of me.
Joni–> There will always be photos!
Esther –> It makes me tired thinking about too, but I’m sure by now you’ve figured out my secret is being heavily dosed with caffeine. Baking day will be no exception.
DragonLady–> You’re a better baker than I. I’d only freeform that many houses if I was going for a Picasso effect.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
i once made a gingerbread house with a little kid. he was a scammer and ate one of the walls. i replaced it with cardboard and stuck a bunch of smarties on it so the next day when he went to take a bite he got a big surprise!
September 24th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Maybe she thinks that you aren’t a lesbian Mz Anita.
I made tagboard patterns to cut them out Anita. There are always great patterns in women’s magazines and I also used a few birdhouse patterns for woodworking. I bought all the stuff needed to make one last year but then the kid who wanted to make one for a contest, spazzed out and we didn’t get it made. I still have all the candy and dry ingredients so maybe this year I will get to make one. About 5 years ago I made seven houses for Habitat for Humanity’s Holiday fundraiser. You can pipe that royal icing into tree shapes onto waxed paper and when dry glue them together with more icing. They really look nice standing next to the houses.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Making a gingerbread house/man takes months??!! Could you tell me how to go about it? Please..
September 25th, 2008 at 9:47 am
I’m so curious. Did “Janna” ever respond about what her comment meant?
September 25th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Jones–> Okay. THAT was funny!
DragonLady–> Birdhouse patterns? What a great idea! The ones I make for the kids are basic track housing because of the number of homes I make plus the fact that the kids could care less about the house structure. It’s all about the icing and candy! I was planning to make a big gingerbread house for our home though and so the birdhouse pattern is an awesome idea for that! It could be a Peeps Winter Cottage! I love that you did that for H4H, one of my favorite organizations, and yes, you can do just about anything with that royal icing cement, can’t you!! As to Janna thinking I’m not a lesbian….Ha!
Giselle–> The ones I make don’t take months Giselle although I’ve seen people make them on the Food Network and wow, they take months and months to handcraft those things. It’s really a sight to see. Here’s a website on Making Gingerbread Houses I found for you that might be helpful if you’re looking to make a basic house.
Laura–> Nope
September 25th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Peeps has winter themed marshmellow stuff now too but the peppermint stars are pretty powerful so I only put those in hot chocolate. Peeps are some of my favorites. I have some in my collection that are about 12 years old. I like mine extra crunchy.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
DragonLady–> I love meeting other people as weird as I am. I love that you know about Peeps and that you have aged Peeps! Too perfect! I used the peep gingerbread boy and girl last time for the houses too and major yum on the peppermint stars in hot chocolate. Those would be fun to make a little slit in and anchor them on the rim of the kid’s hot chocolate cups.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Are you calling me weird? They have a major food fight going on the forum and I am not a part of it. Go call them weird! And issue some cleaning supplies please. I am afraid to go in there!
September 25th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
DL–> Hmmmm. I mean weird in the best possible way. And I’ve seen what’s happening over there and I’m appalled. Simply appalled ::::she said wiping scrambled eggs from off the back of her head::::
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 pm
At Safeway I saw that Betty Crocker has gingerbread cookie mixes in pouches. They were pretty cheap. Since it is about the sugar and candy, It might save you lots of work and possibly money.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
DragonLady–>Hey, thanks for the tip! I’ll buy a box and give it a try! As long as the dough bakes hard without any airy-cakey thing happening, that would be a huge help!