Star Spangled Gingerbread House

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This year’s gingerbread house competition had a theme of “Star Spangled Snowflake” for the annual Snowflake Festival. Thinking of patriotic colors, I also thought of the East and Alexandria area row homes. So the red, white and blue row home idea was born.

This time around I used more sweet edibles than my last ski-slope gingerbread house. Cookies, big red gum, peppermint sticks, broken hard candies, rolos, and lots and lots of gingerbread. Piped gingerbread made most of the doors and windows. I even made a batch of gingerbread with light corn syrup and no cinnamon, so I could get a better coloring out of it.

I tried to add many details like the potted plants, welcome mats, wreaths, light fixtures (dried pineapple chunks and lemon drops) and even ice melt sprinkles on the side-walk.

In transport to the competition site – the most nerve-wracking thing was the flags. They were attached to their spaghetti noodle poles with a line of royal icing – that’s it. They survived the car ride, but not the public viewing. Luckily I think they were still attached when the judging occurred. I did win first place for my class. The Grand Prize winner was well deserved with a fondant mushroom-shaped masterpiece. Also, based on the overall winner, I found out that we do NOT have to adhere to the festival theme every year. Hhhhmmm… that may make it harder to decide what to create in the future.