This Year's Gingerbread Creation

Jason and his friend, N, have worked together on a gingerbread creation to enter into our homeschool group's Gingerbread House Contest for the last 4 years.  This year, they decided to build a Lighthouse!  Day 1 involved looking at internet pictures of gingerbread lighthouses and coming up with a design.  Day 2 was spent making the dough and cutting out and baking the pieces.  Day 3 was for construction and beginning the decorating, and Day 4 was for finishing the decorating.  Tammy and I helped out a bit, but the boys did the majority of the work themselves!

The base is an 18 in. x 18in. drawing board, wrapped in parchment paper.  Cocoa Pebbles Krispy treats formed the land.

trees were made from ice cream cones covered with green decorator icing.

The water was made by cutting a piece of parchment in the shape needed, then placing blue Hall's lozenges on the paper and melting them in a 350 degree oven. They needed to be flattened and spread with the back of a spoon, but that actually helped make the water look wavy and realistic!  We laid the melted hard candy over a layer of blue decorator icing.

Time to add the stripes to the lighthouse -  chocolate chips and white baking chips.  This was painstaking work for this pair of active 12-year-olds.  I was very proud of them and the effort they put into their work.

TA DA!   Good job, guys.

Here are the previous year's creations.

 

2008

2009