As many of you know, we haven’t gone a year without building and decorating a gingerbread house (see exhibits here, here, here, and here, and we weren’t about to skip it this year. We found something a little different this time, though – a gingerbread turkey kit from Trader Joe’s! We thought it was a fun departure from the usual house, and it also gave us an excuse to exercise our decorating skills a little early, around Thanksgiving time instead of Christmas!
It’s that time again… for one of our favorite holiday traditions: building and decorating the gingerbread house! I’m finding that it gets more and fun with every year, as Mio becomes more capable and involved in the decorating process… she placed a lot of the candy herself this year, and gave us some art direction! Mirei was asleep this year (probably for the better, since she probably would have tried to wreck our creation) but maybe next year she can help decorate, too!
In the days since, she’s been asking if she can break off a piece of candy off the house to eat almost daily. Eating it is part of the fun, too! 😉
See past years’ gingerbread houses: 2013 • 2012 • 2011
I have been a longtime fan of the seasonal holiday gingerbread that Starbucks pulls out every year during this time. It’s a ginger flavored quick bread topped with cream cheese frosting and candied orange peel. I get seduced by it every time I go to Starbucks, but this year I decided to try recreating its heavenly goodness at home, as ordering it at Starbucks every time a craving strikes can get pretty darn expensive! A quick search online turned up this recipe, which is the one I used to make this gingerbread.
Here is the result…
The loaf came out pretty good, although it was definitely more dry than the original Starbucks version that I was trying to replicate. I’m a lover of anything topped with cream cheese frosting, though, so I had no qualms with gobbling it up!