I Don't Need to Taste to Believe

Merry Christmas!!!!! I absolutely love Christmas time, for all of the obvious reasons. Baking, cooking, family, singing, shopping, wrapping, baking, and above all, remembrance of  the birth of our Savior <3.
The title of this post comes from one of my current favourite Christmas songs, Peppermint Winter by Owl City, which sums up pretty much what I love about Christmas!

Yesterday I spent most of the day (10:30-5:30 to be exact) baking. First I made Peanut Butter Fudge from a recipe that my friend Colleen posted. I usually do not like fudge simply because of how sweet it is, but I'm convinced that peanut butter can make most desserts better, and the fudge is great! You can see her recipe here.

The rest of the day was spent on Gingerbread. Gingerbread men, women, trees, and one beautiful house!

I used the recipe for Hard Gingerbread that I found in Cooking Down East by Marjorie Standish, it worked out really well, as far as I know. It was the first time I have made gingerbread!

Hard Gingerbread

1/2 cup lard (I used shortening..)

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup molasses

1 tsp baking soda dissolved in

1 tbls hot water

1 beaten egg

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 tsp ginger

2 tsp salt

4 cups sifted flour

Start with sifted flour. First, measure 3 cupfuls into sieve. sift together with spices. This gives you a chance to sift these together, then the remaining 1 cup sifted flour may be added, if you need it. This dough is extremely stiff. It should be firm enough so that it may be patted by your fingers into a grease cookie sheet.

Melt lard and butter together, add sugar and molasses and stir. Make sure this is cool, then add soda dissolved in hot water, add beaten egg. Add sifted dry ingredients. Mix until smooth. Add remaining cup of sifted flour, if necessary. Only add flour until the dough is firm.

Using buttered 12- by 18-inch pan or cookie sheet pat the dough as smoothly as possibly into pan.

Place in 350 degree oven. After gingerbread has baked for 10 minutes, sprinkle top of dough with granulated sugar, continue baking for 10 minutes longer. Cool in pan, cut into squares.

I changed a few things to fit my purpose better, I rolled the dough out on counter instead of pressing it into the pan, and cut it out before it baked instead of after. The gingerbread men only took about 15 minutes instead of 20.

Gingerbread House: quick how-to.

1. Cut out squares of paper to the dimensions you want, so you can then use them as outlines when cutting the dough. 2 gable pieces, 2 outside walls, and 2 roofs. One mistake I made was to make the point on the gable a little steep, so it was harder to get the roof to set.

2. Cut out the dough and bake it. Use a lot of flour while rolling the dough out, it will be so much easier while your moving the piece to the pan that way. Make sure to leave room for a lot of expansion on the pan.

3. Using royal icing and a piping bag, 'glue' three of the sides together, support it for a few minutes, but then it should be all right to stand on its own. Pretty soon after add the fourth wall. Let it stand on it's own while it dry's, but watch out for the walls randomly falling. The first time it happened the house was sitting on the edge of the counter, and the whole piece landed on the floor. I had to glue the pieces back together.

4. Add the roof. I did it one side at a time, and held it on for quite a long time. In the picture below you can see broken wall  :).

5. Decorate! I only had a small amount of candy, so my house was pretty bare.