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Christmas Gingerbread Castles
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13857 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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12 / 1988 |
1,284 Words |
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Kathleen Prentice
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Whether from grandma's kitchen or the neighborhood bakery, a candy-studded gingerbread house is the quintessential holiday tradition. It can take the shape of a cabin drizzled with softly glistening icing-snow to a turreted castle bedecked with glittering hard-candy jewels. The smell of the dough baking or even a lingering whiff of cold gingerbread is enough to warm us all.
In Shakespeare's day this sweet was truly a bread, baked to stay crisp through damp weather. According to a 1904 volume by John Ashton entitled The History of Bread, vending gingerbread in the shapes of men and women and animals was popular at early fairs.
Throughout European and American history, cookbooks have carried not one, but usually several gingerbread recipes, including hard and soft as well as "quick" gingerbread cookies and cakes. They vary from Dutch gingerbread, a 1739 recipe calling for caraway seeds, treacle (molasses), and candied citron added to the butter and ginger mix to Williamburg Ginger Cakes, a 1937 recipe similar to ginger cookies found in today's cookbooks. Early recipes called for bread crumbs; later ones for flour.
Gingerbread was popular at teatime in England and in Colonial America in the form of cakes and cookies. Although it was also enjoyed year-round, this spicy bread became part of traditional holiday fare along with goose and plum cake.
Joe Gerlach, pastry chef at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dearborn, Michigan, remembers from his childhood "a lot of gingerbread eating in my mom's kitchen." Gerlach brought his family tradition to work at the Regency's kitchens last Christmas season—building a ten-thousand-pound gingerbread castle in the hotel lobby. Starting in October he "rolled gingerbread every day." After four hundred hours spent erecting three-pound sheets of gingerbread into fifteen- by twenty-two-foot walls (glued in place with five thousand pounds of icing and adorned with one thousand pounds of candy), the palace opened with Santa enthroned in a twenty-four-foot cookie tower.
Gerlach wanted to create a special holiday ambience as well as a stunning confection. He believes that "gingerbread is a holiday smell, a real Christmassy smell. Everyone remembers that first whiff of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger when they walk into the lobby."
Gerlach baked his gingerbread dream house over the course of several sessions, using a recipe that produced stiff dough for the walls and tower, with extra cinnamon and nutmeg for lasting aroma.
A gingerbread cottage or castle, on a smaller scale, can be produced in your own kitchen. You can plan to bake and build it step by step, over several days (letting the walls and roof stale slightly for durability), or in one marathon session.
Getting ready
Making a pattern is an essential initial step in preparing to build a gingerbread structure, followed by gathering utensils, clearing a work area, and stocking up on ingredients.
Simple squares and rectangles form the cookie walls and roof. For a basic square or
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