Making a Gingerbread House is a LOT like Making a Quilt!

Last year I got the urge to make a gingerbread house, just like I used to do with the grandkids when they were little. We used to spend hours putting them together in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Here is one from 2015!

The grandkids are mostly grown, but I decided to buy a kit and make one anyway. I went for the whole village kit. And I had fun. As I tend to do, I wanted to expand on the project and thought why not make a gingerbread house from scratch next year? I will start small and make just one house and then make it bigger each year. Famous last words…

Last weekend, I decided it was time to fulfill my pledge. I asked my grand daughter if she wanted to join me, but she had other plans. She was, however, interested in decorating one if I made the gingerbread.

I decided to start the project with a well known flour company recipe for gingerbread. Their recipes had worked well in the past, so I jumped in and made a double recipe. As I set about rolling and cutting the shapes from my template, it occurred to me that making a gingerbread house might be a bit like making a quilt.

1. Patterns and recipes are not fail proof!

Sometimes a pattern is a dud. It has errors or uncorrected mistakes. Maybe it is poorly written. My first gingerbread recipe was a dud. It was pale. I tasted the dough when raw. Hmmm, a bit bland, no real gingery flavor. Maybe baking would improve it? Nope. It was even blander, if that was possible, and the dough had poofed up in places and was rather soft. I kept cutting and baking, reluctant to cut my losses.

Have you ever done that with a quilt? Started a pattern and then got that feeling in the pit of your stomach that this is not going to go well.

I left it all to dry overnight and woke up to find that the bland, puffy, soft pieces were still bland, pale, puffy and soft. I opened the garbage and tossed it all in. What? Throw it all away? Yup. It tasted like nothing and eating it all was not an option. Too soft to build with. Sometimes you need to bite the bullet and just bin a bad project.

I researched recipes once more and found one that used double the spices. Bingo, I am trying this one! This time, I made a single batch and tested. It smelled wonderful, was tasty and looked good. It was firm, but not brittle or puffy. Yay!

2. Making mistakes is par for the course.

It is important to remember that mistakes are the building blocks of life. Yes, it means that a project goes sliding off the timeline. A weekend project turns into several days. The sparkly, neat as a pin, perfectly executed picture in our head is more home spin and rough hewn in real life. It is okay. Home spun has its charm and isn’t the process where the fun lies?

3. Measure twice, cut once and fudge.

Just like with quilting, gingerbread houses require pieces to be consistent in size to fit together well. And just like in quilting, the best intentions don’t always pan out. I am baking and then trimming while it is warm and soft. And then checking to see if pieces are the same size as each other…it seems I could trim forever, but quilting taught me NOT to trim too much. And now it is time to assemble. I finally got it into roughly the shape of the pattern, but let me tell you, the fudge factor is HUGE! Once dry, it held and that is really the minimum requirement for a gingerbread house. If it holds, you have a house.

3. “Add more icing” is the equivalent of “Quilt it out!”

When the piecework gets tough, and seams do not quite match, and it is a bit off of square, and you are wondering whether it is all worthwhile, remember to Quilt It Out. What does that mean? It means that our hiccups tend to disappear under the quilting. Poofy? Quilt it down. Mismatched? Quilt it fancy. Boring? Quilt feathers. Quilting feathers always makes a quilt better.

And so it goes with my gingerbread house! Mismatched edges? Ice them! Gaps? Ice it! Dripping icing, squiggly icing, yes add more! And sparkles. Add sparkles!

5. From humble beginnings…

I had misgivings, I mean “am I ever going to show this to anyone” types of misgivings, but I kept working it and adding icing (an entire recipe of royal icing!). And finally my house developed a little wonky charm. Here she is.

And yes, my 16 yr old grand daughter decorated one, too.

When we don’t have faith in our projects and the mistakes accrue and the project seems doomed, when the reality does fit the pretty picture in our mind...it is time to let go and let the project be who it wants to be.

We talk about quilts “talking” to us and taking us in unexpected directions. Gingerbread houses ARE like quilts, they talk to us, too.

Enjoy the holiday, the solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever holiday you celebrate. And always…

Happy quilting!

Lennea