Happy Holidays!

School is out and many of us are planning on (attempting to) build gingerbread houses with the kiddos.  To make the process easier on everyone,  I have gathered up our favorite gingerbread house recipes, as well as a few helpful tips that will make building your gingerbread houses a whole lot easier.  Here is your guide to everything gingerbread!

The Gingerbread recipe we love the most:

No need to reinvent the wheel on this one.  We use a gingerbread recipe from foodnetwork.com that works every single time. One thing to keep in mind with this recipe is that it will seem very crumbly at first.  Don’t worry, just keep kneading the dough until it starts to combine.  If it is taking too long, you may need to add a tablespoon or two of warm water to help speed up the process.  It will come together.  As with any cookie dough, It really helps to let the dough chill for at least an hour before you start cutting your shapes.

GINGERBREAD RECIPE HERE

The Royal Icing Recipe we love the most:

For adhering your cookie cut-outs and decorating the gingerbread house, try our no-drama go to royal icing recipe.  You will find the recipe at the bottom of the post within the link, below.

FIND OUR ROYAL ICING RECIPE HERE

Top 5 Tips for building gingerbread houses:

1.  Build the basic structure of your gingerbread house out of paper prior to baking so you will know how big your gingerbread cut-outs need to be.
2. When baking gingerbread for a house, you may want to slightly over-bake your dough.  This will ensure that your gingerbread house is strong enough to hold together.
3. Consider building your gingerbread house on a piece of board.  This will allow you to move the gingerbread house easily once it’s constructed.  You would hate to do all that work just to have the house fall apart when you move it!
4. Use a cheese grater to smooth out the edges of your gingerbread cookie pieces to help them fit together just right.  I learned this trick from Chef John Cook at The Grove Park Inn and it has been a game changer.
5. If you are building a gingerbread house that WILL NOT BE EATEN, you can support your house walls with foam board and use hot glue to hold together your bigger pieces, (no hot glue for kids, of course).  You can see that we used plenty of non-edible components in the gingerbread house featured in this post.  No shame in my game!  This is all about baking memories and having fun.

Decorations:

Here are a few sources to find fun and totally unique candy for your gingerbread houses.  Remember, great candy decorations can turn even the most messed up gingerbread house into a really charming piece of art.  There are no rules, think outside the box and don’t take the process too seriously!

• Old Time Candy
• IT’Sugar Candy Charleston
• Sweet Julep’s Mount Pleasant

We hope this post will serve as a print-worthy source for your fun and festive family gingerbread traditions.  I will continue to add to the post moving forward as I learn from my own mistakes, as well your tips and feedback!

Merry Christmas,

Candyshop Vintage Gingerbread Shop:

The post Your Guide to Everything Gingerbread! appeared first on Pie Crust and Pixie Dust.

For the last 25 years, the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina has hosted the National Gingerbread House Competition.  The competition began as a community gathering, and over two decades has become one of the most noteworthy holiday baking events in the country.  This year, our family was lucky enough to visit the Omni Grove Park Inn to celebrate the competition and sit down with recently awarded “Top Pastry Chef in the United States,” and Executive Pastry Chef at the Grove Park Inn, Chef John Cook. The purpose of our interview was to learn about the competition as well as Chef Cook’s top tips on building gingerbread houses of our own.

The opportunity to learn tips on building gingerbread houses from one of the best pastry chefs in the nation was great.  However, without even intending to, Chef cook served up advice that would inspire the children and me far beyond the four walls of a gingerbread house.  He gave us a recipe for success.

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If you haven’t visited the Omni Grove Park Inn, you must plan a trip!  We love the hotel at any time of the year, but there is something magical about this place during the holidays.  The Inn is over a century old, and sits perched in a historic Asheville neighborhood, with panoramic views of the  Appalachian mountains.  The outside as well as the lobby of the hotel is constructed with massive boulders, and is an amazing example of original Arts and Crafts architecture perfectly preserved in time.  During the holidays, the lobby is filled with families sipping hot chocolate from a full-sized cocoa “shop” made entirely of gingerbread.  Yep, the shop is made of gingerbread!  The visitors sit around the huge Christmas tree, in rocking chairs around the two enormous fireplaces, or out on the heated back portico watching the sunset over the mountains.

If you visit The Grove Park Inn during the holidays, you will literally feel like you are in your very own Hallmark holiday movie.  You know you love those movies, we won’t judge.

The hotel has a 40,000 square foot subterranean spa as well as several shops, restaurants and a coffee shop.  We met with Chef Cook and Director of Public Relations, Tracey Johnston-Crum outside the coffee shop.  When Chef Cook sat down, he explained that he was taking a break from baking thousands of gingerbread cookies with his team for the holiday guests.  After learning all about the pastry program at the hotel, I asked Chef Cook what it took to build a great gingerbread house?  I explained that for many of us, the idea of creating a gingerbread house from scratch is a huge challenge, especially when baking with kids.  With ease, Chef Cook said the following:

How to build a gingerbread house from scratch:

1. Establish a Goal:  What do you want your gingerbread house to look like?
2. Create a Visual Strategy: Create the gingerbread house you want to make out of paper  before you begin baking.  This will allow you to know what size your walls, roof and other components need to be.
3. Be Patient:  Bake your gingerbread low and slow.  Additionally, once your gingerbread is baked, let it dry out like a Biscotti.  Although this requires patience, it’s worth it to ensure your gingerbread are strong enough to build upon.
4. Teamwork: Having a good team in place will help you once all of the pieces start coming together.
5. Prepare for Mishaps:   You don’t want to be defeated if a wall of your gingerbread house collapses.  Consider preparing extra pieces, just in case things go off course.  Remember, proper preparation prevents poor performance!
6. Consider the Long Term:  How the gingerbread house will hold up over time? What do you need to do to make sure your creation doesn’t all fall apart over time?

It didn’t take long for me to see the metaphor in all of this!  I hope my children remember this recipe for success if they ever decide to start a business or when they are faced with a personal or professional challenge in the future.  We whole heartedly accepted Chef Cook’s advice as it relates to baking and as it relates to life in general.   Here is how our gingerbread house turned out after following the advice from Chef Cook.

Our Goal: Rainbow Row House

Paper Strategy:

Patience:  We used this EASY recipe and baked it low and slow.

Teamwork and a good plan for keeping it together!  Our Charleston inspired Gingerbread House.

We had such a blast celebrating the 25th Annual National Gingerbread Competition at The Grove Park Inn.  The gingerbread houses were so inspirational, and the beauty and hospitality of the resort was unforgettable.   We hope you give building your own gingerbread house a try.  I truly believe that by way of these six tips to building (anything) gingerbread houses, you will find it to be a fun family tradition.

Many thanks to Director of Public Relations, Tracey Johnston-Crum, Chef John Cook, and the kind staff of the Omni Grove Park Inn.

Happy holidays,

Emily

Snapshots from the 25th Annual National Gingerbread House Competition:

The post Omni Grove Park Inn: Recipe for Success appeared first on Pie Crust and Pixie Dust.