Kurt's GingerPress

Around lunchtime I started on the second batch of dough. Again, I dropped in an entire bag of flour, 8 cups of brown sugar, and a jar of molasses. Landon was around too and, naturally, he wanted to help. He has a little step-stool that he totes around so access to the counter is pretty easy.

Sippin' on some sizzurp

Today I also trimmed the first six wall pieces that I baked yesterday. Cutting them with a steak knife worked better than expected so I think I will stick with that strategy when some level of precision is required. On top of that, I cut the templates out of paper rather than cardboard; this turned out to be yet another obvious point which had never occurred to me before but was sufficiently awesome to continue in future years. Still, those pieces were all a bit soft so I’m a little nervous they may crumble under their own weight. I don’t plan to stand the house upright until late tomorrow night so as long as the side walls hold up horizontally I should be good.

Of course, all this trimming produced a healthy supply of scraps and snacks for the fam. Gingerbread was enjoyed by all for the first time since last Christmas.

In terms of production I baked eight 9″ by 9″ pieces (2 for each level in the floor plan plus 2 which will be cut down for the roof). There was enough left over to roll out some super-sized flats which I will cut down to miscellaneous components…like stairs or decor. More pictures tomorrow as the fun part begins…

‘Twas the night before, the night before, the night before, the night before Christmas
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the gas fireplace with care,
In hopes that Santa Claus soon would be there.

Landon was nestled all snug in his bed,
While visions of SpongeBob danced in his head.
With Jamie out with friends, and I with my ginger supply,
Had just whipped up a batch of tasty cow pie…

Tastes way better than regular cow pie

And from here I don’t really remember the rest of the poem but I do know that this mass of deliciousness required two jars of molasses. Also, I don’t know how I forgot to buy flour yesterday, but I did. So I used what I could scrounge together from by parents’ pantry…50% regular unbleached flour, 30% pastry flour, and 20% wheat flour.

Since relative size among the pieces is more important this year I decided to bake pieces larger than I need so that I can cut them more precisely when they cool. Most of today’s pieces will be used as structural walls. Because I started a day early these pieces will have an extra 24 hours to set before I stand them up and cut windows/doors.

As a bonus today, my Step-dad showed me how to use the convection settings on the oven. For once I don’t have giant burn marks to hide with candy and icing.

Convection baked gingerbread

GingerThing 2011 is upon us! Ahh, Grandmother’s-brand unsulphured original molasses, it has been too long.

I started thinking about what to build about a month ago. You see, there is a whiff of extra excitement in the air considering it’s the 5th anniversary of Gingerthingery and Landon, now 3 years old, actually understands what’s happening.

Landon, future Chicago Booth mogul

First a quick life recap. Jamie and I moved to San Francisco in June so I had planned on building something reminiscent of our new hometown. And, what better to spread Christmas cheer than to recreate Alcatraz, perhaps our country’s most cherished hive of scum and villainy.

But, my Alcatraz was going to be awesome. I wanted to do a cross-section of the main prison with little bars on the windows and gummy bears dragging around ball-and-chains (licorice and Whoppers). But, like last year, that idea fell flat with our resident chief of Christmas spirit. So I asked him, what would be the most awesome thing I could build. “A mailbox!!!” Hmm. That would be cool I suppose.

Every time Landon shows up at my parent’s place he asks if I want to play with his toys in our basement. And we always do two things: (1) play “golf” with inflatable mallets and an 18″ ball and (2) decorate his dollhouse. Well, it is my sister’s dollhouse from when we lived in Colorado, but now it’s his. And he loves decorating.

Landon's dollhouse

Thus, the dollhouse-sized gingerbread mansion was born. From a design perspective, I plan to incorpate the room structure of the dollhouse but add an exterior that pays homage to Kevin McCallister’s timeless palace. The most obvious new feature would be interior decoration–so my icing lines need to be much cleaner and the walls need to support more weight. This also means Landon can help me make furniture to put inside the house.

After measuring the actual dollhouse, I determined that I would need about 11 square feet of gingerbread (more than double the amount used in the 2009 Sears Tower or 2010 GingerTrain). So I need to scale it down a bit.

I scaled the measurements down so that one side of the house would be the size of a cookie sheet. Is that structurally sound? I don’t know. My stepdad says I will need reinforcements. We’ll see. In any case, I only need 8 square feet of gingerbread. Let’s do this!

Oh, and here’s my blissfully excessive stash of sugar and candy!

And this is only half of it!

Christmas was great! Kristi and Landon came over around 9:30 in the morning. Apparently on their way over Kristi had told Landon that there will be a Thomas the Train at my parent’s place. He busted through the door, kicked off his shoes, and skipped into the kitchen eager to find Thomas. My step-dad saw him and pointed at the train and said, “Look there!”. Landon squinted his eyes, walked right up to the train, then turned to my mom and said, “Where’s Thomas?!” Aww, fail. So, we did the reasonable thing and told him Thomas was inside the train. He went the rest of the day saying, quite adorably, “Thomas lives inside that train.” In any case, nothing stopped him from eating the gingerbread.

Excitedly Tearing Open a Present

Landon Poking Thomas

Landon Stealing Coal

It’s done! The first thing I did this morning (even before breakfast!) was make some more frosting. My sister worked the night shift last night–she’s an RN–so she got off work at 7AM. Excited to continue decorating, she cowboyed up and came straight over to my parent’s house. We first decorated the engine, then she completed the worm car (see below) on her own. I finished the passenger car just before heading out to church which, like last year, featured a Christmas pageant starring all the children from the congregation…most of whom were dressed as little angels or sheep. We got back around 10:30 and I put the finishing touches–railroad tracks and sugar snow–on this year’s GingerThing.

GingerTrain - Front View

GingerTrain - Rear View

The Engine
Kristi and I designed the engine based on Thomas the Train. Landon’s favorite toy right now is his train set. I had started with two large bags of M&M minis and this used most of the blue ones. Every car has wheels made of York Peppermint Patties–the engine has six while the rest of the cars have four.

GingerTrain - Engine

Passenger Car
The most unique element of the passenger car is the Christmas tree adorning the roof of the car. I used one of the two boxcars as the structure and wanted the design to look like it had some people riding along. The little heads in the window are Sour Patch Kids. You can also see the connector between the cars is a small strand of Twizzler Pull & Peel licorice.

GingerTrain - Passenger Car

Coal Car
The third car in the train (and the one I teased folks with yesterday) is the coal car. You can see I have now filled it with a heaping mound of Cocoa Puffs coal.

GingerTrain - Coal Car

Log Car
This one has proven to be a crowd favorite with the family. The logs are Reese’s Sticks. The thinner logs are actually from a box of low calorie snacks because I ran out of the full size logs. So, for the anti-guilt diners there is, for the first time, something to eat. I used some peeled licorice to tie down the logs and “bolt” them to the platform with berry Jelly Beans.

GingerTrain - Log Car

Worm Car
When Kristi and I were shopping for candy the other night I mentioned that I wanted to have two open-top cargo cars but I wasn’t sure what else a train would be carrying besides coal. She suggested we fill it with dirt which I thought sounded like a reasonable thing for a train to carry. Then, as we scanned the shelves she spotted the gummy worms and thought up the idea to infest the dirt. Perfect! The dirt itself is a mix of cocoa powder and the rest of the box of Cocoa Puffs, which i ground to a pulp in the food processor.

GingerTrain - Worm Car

Caboose
Rounding out the train our red and green caboose. We originally wanted to make the whole thing red except for the windows and rear rail but there simply weren’t enough red M&Ms, so we went with a festive red and green look. I added the tail lights on the very back (which you can see better from the rear facing picture at the top of this post) after my parents brought back the peppermints from the Thai restaurant last night.

GingerTrain - Caboose

And now some stats. This year’s creation is just over 60 inches long plus 10 inches of track on each end. The box cars stand at 6 inches tall and 5 inches wide. I used 10 pounds of flour, 8 pounds of powdered sugar, 14 eggs, one box of Cocoa Puffs, and a small fortune in candy. We’ll see what Landon thinks when he gets here on Christmas morning!

The Train