Daring Bakers December: the most happily inedible baking project ever!
Because this month's Daring Bakers recipe is pretty holiday-appropriate, we're allowed to post it several days earlier than the usual reveal date.
Info text:
The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
It bothers me that it says, "Daring Bakers' everywhere," but I can't change the blog-checker text chunk! Don't blame me for that one! (You can blame me for all of the me errors instead. :P)
Yes... Gingerbread houses! This was really new for me--I've never made gingerbread anything in my life, from scratch or otherwise. I had a lot of fun with this because it's the kind of thing lots of people get to do when they're kids or as holiday traditions, but I've never had the opportunity/excuse and got to play catchup.
I was also really glad that this month's challenge was going to be something you don't eat. It's tough to be trying to get in shape and be a Daring Baker, since it always involves making lots of delicious but horribly unhealthy things, but with this I would still get to make something fun without having all of the calories looming.
We were given 2 recipes to choose from, and I went with the one I could do with stuff I already had on hand. My dough ended up being really dry. Even after I left it in the fridge overnight it was pretty crumbly, but I managed to get it all rolled/cut out into shapes. Unfortunately, I don't think the recipe was a very good one, as I and a lot of others were having the same problems: Basically, because of the baking soda in the recipe, the gingerbread puffed up a lot, and at the same time the pieces all shrunk, meaning they no longer fit my templates at all.
Because of this, along with my general lack of gingerbread expertise, my pieces look pretty shabby, but I promise beforehand they actually were cut out according to a template and were, you know... proper rectangles and such! It did, however, make just the right amount of dough for a house.
Here are the foundations of my house in progress! What will it be?! I was pretty worried about even the basic shapes coming out right, but I discovered that decorating fixes just about everything.
For those of you who can't tell because of my Awesome Skills... it's a Pokemon center. Made of gingerbread.
No, I could not get any nerdier.
The roofing accidentally has Scooby Doo characters on it. I bought fruit roll-ups that were labeled as being plain/red, so I was sad to see Scoob' and friends on it, but there was no going back. D:
All in all, a really fun challenge and fitting for the holiday season!
Info text:
The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
It bothers me that it says, "Daring Bakers' everywhere," but I can't change the blog-checker text chunk! Don't blame me for that one! (You can blame me for all of the me errors instead. :P)
Yes... Gingerbread houses! This was really new for me--I've never made gingerbread anything in my life, from scratch or otherwise. I had a lot of fun with this because it's the kind of thing lots of people get to do when they're kids or as holiday traditions, but I've never had the opportunity/excuse and got to play catchup.
I was also really glad that this month's challenge was going to be something you don't eat. It's tough to be trying to get in shape and be a Daring Baker, since it always involves making lots of delicious but horribly unhealthy things, but with this I would still get to make something fun without having all of the calories looming.
We were given 2 recipes to choose from, and I went with the one I could do with stuff I already had on hand. My dough ended up being really dry. Even after I left it in the fridge overnight it was pretty crumbly, but I managed to get it all rolled/cut out into shapes. Unfortunately, I don't think the recipe was a very good one, as I and a lot of others were having the same problems: Basically, because of the baking soda in the recipe, the gingerbread puffed up a lot, and at the same time the pieces all shrunk, meaning they no longer fit my templates at all.
Because of this, along with my general lack of gingerbread expertise, my pieces look pretty shabby, but I promise beforehand they actually were cut out according to a template and were, you know... proper rectangles and such! It did, however, make just the right amount of dough for a house.
Here are the foundations of my house in progress! What will it be?! I was pretty worried about even the basic shapes coming out right, but I discovered that decorating fixes just about everything.
For those of you who can't tell because of my Awesome Skills... it's a Pokemon center. Made of gingerbread.
No, I could not get any nerdier.
The roofing accidentally has Scooby Doo characters on it. I bought fruit roll-ups that were labeled as being plain/red, so I was sad to see Scoob' and friends on it, but there was no going back. D:
All in all, a really fun challenge and fitting for the holiday season!