The gingerbread house: or, why I am not an architect

We made a gingerbread house today.
Not from a box. That would be way too easy.
In a moment of insanity I bought a kit of gingerbread-house shaped cookie cutters. So you can make your own house pieces and assemble it.
Now I know there was a reason why it was on sale.

We used the gingerbread recipe that came with the kit.

I had help with everything.

Viggo measured out the dry ingredients.

I measured out the cup of Crisco. I tried not to think about that too much. I don't think we've consumed a cup of Crisco cumulatively over the past five years. So this amount felt a little excessive.

Other highly nutritious ingredients included dark corn syrup and brown sugar.

And a whole bunch of white sugar.

Then I warmed everything together.

I poured the hot grease and sugar mixture into the mixing bowl.

After I mixed it with a spoon I used the paddle attachment. Well, it turned everything into a sandy mixture, which really wasn't very roll-out-able.

That wasn't good. So I added lots and lots of water.

Then we painstakingly rolled it out and cut the pieces.

While the 4,000 dirty dishes from all of this were accumulating, I made frosting.

Finally, the pieces were cool and the building began.

Unfortunately they didn't bake evenly. See? Those are the roof pieces. They weren't exactly the same size . . . huh.

There might have been a smallish gap in the roof.

The kids spent a considerable amount of time decorating and then there was a catastrophe.

The gingerbread couldn't weather the storm of four busy little hands.
I considered the use of hot glue.

But then we just abandoned ship and had lunch instead.

Then Nate came home and repaired it into the sad little structure it presently is.

The end.