Your turn to help me –
My friend Traci and I are throwing a holiday party this Saturday — and I’m supposed to make a LEED-certified gingerbread house for the occasion. At first, I was really psyched, but now I’m kinda getting stressed —
But right now I just had a couple cups of coffee and feel ready to tackle the task. So I’m wondering — How long do gingerbread houses keep if I don’t lacquer it with weird chemicals? Can I bake and assemble today, or should I wait until Friday?
And if you’re gonna be in LA this Saturday and we know each other and you haven’t gotten an evite yet — It’s because gmail’s rather handy habit of putting every email addy I ever send a note to in my address book is not so handy when you’re trying to go through your contact list to figure out who to invite. Lemme know if I accidentally missed you — You haven’t been blacklisted –
http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/prefab-gingerbread-by-michelle-kaufmann-038858
Comment by Elise — December 18, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
Sounds like the main thing is to keep it away from moisture, so cover it w/ plastic wrap or seal inside a big tupperware. This answer said one week, and that’s cuz the icing stops working as glue. I’m looking forward to your LEED certified creation!
Comment by ~summer~ — December 18, 2007 @ 6:31 pm
Oh please don’t wrap it in plastic wrap! Bake it later if you have to. The plastic wrap’s not worth it!
Just my 2 cents. I knows nothing about gingerbread.
Comment by Beth Terry — December 19, 2007 @ 12:22 am
Gingerbread houses keep for ever without any chemicals. Probably you could find them as fossils if dinosaurs could bake.
However, you really want to eat in in a couple of weeks’ time, otherwise the gingerbread dries up and eating it feels like grinding your teeth at a steel plate.
Do not use icing (that soft white sugar mass) as glue, use caramelised sugar instead (melt sugar in a pan). That will keep also for ever, although eating the seams is like eating hard candy.
Create icing using egg whites and icing sugar instead of water+icing sugar, and you will get icing that stays in shape and dries thoroughly.
Comment by avs — December 19, 2007 @ 2:19 am
No idea about the “hows” of sustainable gingerbread house building but will we be seeing in in the bakeforchange Flickr pool? (http://www.bakeforachange.com/)
Comment by jean — December 20, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
Did you check out Roz’s column about building a gingerbread village on Grist? The pics are cool!
http://grist.org/advice/season/2007/11/29/
No shellac required.
Comment by Lea — December 20, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
Okay — I delayed the project to avoid the whole plastic wrap conundrum. Now, I’m ready to start! Thanks for the tips, everyone :)
Comment by Siel — December 21, 2007 @ 12:11 pm