Our First Gingerbread Competition

We are entering in the family category, and it was truly a family effort! Connor and Daddy cut and painted the plywood base. Connor and I built the gingerbread house. Connor, Lex and I made the fondant snow, tree and snowman. Then Connor and I decorated it all. It was Connor who made the decision to put two of the gingerbread men on the roof of the house, which lead to the title of our entry, "Up On the Housetop."






I'm super pleased with how well it turned out. Connor is really good at decorating with candy!

Chocolate Disaster

Well, I tried the icing recipe that I have for chocolate plastic, which is basically fondant made of chocolate, and it never set. It's still too mushy to use as icing. I blame this on the fact that I need another candy themometer and a kitchen scale. I kind of guessed at a few things, and while I seemed to guess pretty well, it wasn't good enough. Sigh.

Now I have a lot of melty chocolately goodness that isn't quite icing and I have to decide what to do with it. I might use it to cover strawberries or something. I thought about making it into brownies by adding flour and eggs and the like, but once again, I'd be guessing, and I'm not sure I want half-baked brownies. Nothing is more depressing than chocolate brownies that you can't eat.