The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose Gingerbread Houses!

Anna: The recipe I tested is from Good Housekeeping – I chose it because it was simple and required only ingredients I personally always have in my kitchen. Plus, it was so funky I HAD to try it, and luckily that worked out. I made my house around Halloween and decided to take advantage of the spooky goodies I could only get at that time of year.

Y: I tested a Scandinavian recipe from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book. I chose a Beatrice Ojakangas’ recipe because I love her book, and usually have great success with her recipes. I was also attracted to the ingredients she had in her gingerbread.

Oh boy….what a challenge for this month’s Bakers’ Challenge! Not a complicated thing (necessarily) but a very time consuming one. I have to say I went with the Scandinavian one as it seemed shorter to prepare. I invited my past guests to help out, Johanne and Raquel. We killed 2 birds with one stone and also did the Cook’s Challenge (shh secret till Jan 14th).

I just have so many pictures I decided to go with a gallery instead. Just click on the image to see it bigger. A couple I will show you bigger only.

As mentioned in the recipe yes the dough was quite dry but held so I kapet faith in the indications. After 2 hours of refrigeration it was a big massive blog of goodness that was really hard to roll.

But we made it finally with a lots of cracks to patch. Then I precut the shapes, beaked tehm and recut. This method I really enjoyed. I got my template at Fashion-Era but modified the sizes a big for a longer house

Now you may wonder why I have a pic of a woman asleep on the couch? Well that is Raquel as she dozed through dinner and most of the house decoratring lol. So Johanne and I lifted your sleeves and attacked the architecture assembly. Our glue was a bit thick so we had to dilute it. We finally got it all up and stable enough. That was a huge releif. Then on to decorate with candy canes, smarties, almond cookies ans shingles, licorice candies and colored cake icing.

We were really happy with our result. I know it went Kitch at one point but who cares!

So is it just me but I do not know if I will have the courage to eat it after a couple of days. Its too beautiful! 

To see the recipe and to view what others have created make sure to visit the following link.