Täglich Wiederkehrendes Abenteuer

Will and I did our little family Christmas celebration this weekend.  We made gingerbread houses from scratch which was a bit of an odyssey.  We decided to make two houses so we could each have one to decorate.  I thought I had gotten everything we would need for our celebration on Friday, but the gingerbread calls for much more flour than I expected, so Will had to take a trip to get more.  To be fair, we use a lot of flour, so it’s easy to get low on it without noticing.  I had enough flour for one batch so I started on that while Will went shopping.  Right after he got back I noticed that the recipe calls for a ridiculous amount of molasses.  So Will went to the store a second time for more molasses.

Luckily I did have enough molasses for the first batch.  And the sticky goop takes so long to pour, Will was back before I was done.

We were lucky it wasn’t January or I would have been standing there like that all day.  Ba dum cha!

I mentioned we made the houses from scratch which requires big cookie cutters.  You roll the dough out right on the sheet so you don’t have to move the pieces before baking.

The recipe said to bake until they were light brown, which was a little bit baffling; they’re already pretty brown.  Turns out they lighten slightly when baked.

It’s important not to move them at all until they are cooled completely because they’re still kind of soft and breakable when they’re warm.  We put them in the fridge.  When they’re cooled, they make a very suitable building material.  And by that I mean they’re hard as a rock.

We’ve got our white icing glue in a squeeze bag with interchangeable tips.  I can’t imagine doing this without it.  As decor we had red hots, gum drops, chocolate covered mint patties, various sprinkles, and those lovely red and white mints no one likes.  Will begins with construction.

I wish we had taken more picture of the actual construction.  It really worked much better than I thought it would.  The icing is really sticky and it dries really hard.  To put on the roof, you actually glue the two roof pieces to a piece of paper to help hold them together.  Making them was quite a process, but I think it was worth doing.  Maybe we’ll do it again next year.  We could make our family do it with us when we visit?  Will says it was fun, but he wishes the houses were edible.  Well technically they are.

Enjoy the finished products:

I like Will’s gumdrop lights.  If you look through the window, you can see his Christmas tree.  We tried to light them with electric tea lights, but the lights aren’t bright enough.

After our gingerbread house journey, we were planning to have a nice beef roast, but we didn’t really have enough time, so we had a frozen pizza instead.  Then we went to a show!  We found out about it from the Lenin lighting, but then I found out a lady I work with was in it and she had a coupon code that let us get free tickets.  And it was close enough to our house to walk.  It was really cute.  It was a mash up of Sleeping Beauty and Princess and the Pea called Sleeping Beauty and the Pea.  It was for kids, but there were also some jokes for the grown ups.  For example, the fairy godmother was played by a man who felt the need to inform us that he is, indeed, a fairy.  The prince in search of a princess had a binder full of women. *Snerk.*  There was even a bawdy unfinished poem whose last word presumably rhymed with “duck.”

There was also an audience participation element that was really fun.  We were to boo at the villain and cheer for the hero.  When someone said, “Oh no it’s not,” we said, “Oh yes it is!”  We tried to warn the princess not to touch the record player.  When there was a ghost behind the characters, we were supposed to tell them.  The scene with the ghost was my favorite, I think.  I think it would have been really fun with kids. Will says the villain, who was played by the lady I know from work, reminded him of Izma from The Emperor’s New Groove.

It is now Sunday.  We opened presents this morning and we made pancakes.  Later, we’ll make the roast that we planned to have yesterday and we’ll also make some glühwein soon.  Maybe we’ll take pictures of that.