Gingerbread House

I remember making these when I was a teenager. There was not much of a point, they take a lot of effort and we couldn’t eat it. My template used to be a huge cake, given by my bake teacher. I had thought it was in my file all these years until yesterday. I realized it was already gone probably years ago.

So I set up to redraw the template. The key thing here is to make them really simple, and draw all the parts in one piece of paper, so that in the event a big house is required, all you need to do is print this one piece on a big piece of paper.

There is no rule in decorating and making a ginger bread house. I have made the dough a lot harder by using very little baking powder. It is almost too hard to eat. Secondly, the use of shortening vs butter as it will spread less in the oven.

This is almost a failproof recipe.

It was surprising to me that my husband did not know that I make gingerbread house. It means for all these years that I was married to him, all these years that the kids were growing up, we did not spend time making these at all. It is kind of sad. It makes me feel that I missed the opportunity to play with my kids.

This reminds me that tradition in a family is so important. Even though Christmas is not really in our tradition, we are Asians, we do celebrate Christmas as well. Hopefully, this rude shock today will wake me up, to treasure the moments in this family and to pass the valuable traditions on to my kids. Maybe not Christmas traditions, but our Asian, Singaporean, Chinese, South east Asian traditions.