Gingerbread & Family Traditions
So last week I sent out a call for your baking suggestions & was delighted at the response. Thank you so much, guys! Really, you sent some great ideas for holiday baking. I will definitely be making some Chocolate Peppermint Patty Cookies this week (via The Los & Lauren). Sam’s Genoise Cake sounds like a delicious thing to try for an upcoming party.
I could go on, but those ideas will have to wait a little… When I was thinking about what to bake this weekend, I forgot about one minor thing. Well, actually it’s a big thing. This weekend had already been devoted to some VIB: very important baking. (I know, lame.)
Here’s the backstory: When I was a little girl, my grandma would bake all of us gingerbread houses to decorate for Christmas. She’d cook the individual pieces in cast iron pans & construct them into bare houses with royal icing caulking. When it came time to decorate, she’d whip up batches of royal icing to use as “glue” & lay out dishes of every kind of edible supply we thought would look pretty (with a heavy emphasis on red & green candies, of course).
The tradition has continued & we’ve done it without fail every year. On years we weren’t able to fly to our grandparent’s house for Christmas, she would actually mail everything to us. All of her eight grandkids (in three different cities from Palo Alto to Washington D.C.) would get a homemade house to decorate, frosting to use, and a kit of the harder-to-find candies she’d sought out. (Those chocolates that look like tumbled rocks were a huge deal, especially in the years before Central Market made them easy to access. Seriously the big time.) The dates are kinda fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure she did it for over 20 years because it started when I was young. That’s a lot of baking.
She passed away two years ago, leaving an empty space in our family that no one can fill. She was that kind of grandma, you know what I mean? So of all of the things about her we’re missing, I thought there was at least one thing I could do to keep our traditions the same. Before she died, I took the gingerbread pans & told her that I’d be happy to make them that year… & I guess the years after that too. Indefinitely I think, because everything about Christmas seems to remind me of her.
This year it hasn’t been going so well. The dough has been turning out strange, the side-panels of the house are bubbling & the corners are burning. I don’t remember so many mishaps last year—perhaps beginner’s luck? But I’m working on it & hope to have the ones I need to ship in the mail by Thursday. Wish me luck… I’ve got 2 down (poorly crafted ones I’ll probably try to pawn off on my brothers or sister) & 7 to go.
(If you’re interested in starting a tradition of your own, you can buy these pans that come with the recipe.)
You did a great job!!!!