Just Desserts

Warning: If you are ever given a week to plan and execute a home made gingerbread house, think twice before attempting it. That is just what happened the other week with Habitat for Humanity. We found out about a gingerbread contest going on at the Woodlands Inn Resort and the prize was too good to be passed up, worth about $3,000. The challenge was to create a gingerbread house that related to your business or organization. All materials needed to be edible on a 2x2 ft. board. For a prize that good no one was going to get away with a store bought kit and win. An extra challenge for us was that none of us had any experience making gingerbread or assembling a house with it.

We met to brainstorm our design and I did online research for tips and tricks. The easiest thing we could think of was making a replica of a Habitat built home, with little gingerbread people as workers dressing it up for the holidays. One of our volunteers took it upon herself to bake the gingerbread at home, the day after Thanksgiving. God Bless her. So a day to bake, the next day it was assembled with royal icing. It's more tricky than it sounds, the icing consistency takes some trial and error. Also we didn't attempt it because of the time constraint, but if we had wanted to use icing to decorate the sides of the house, that would've had to be done before putting the walls up. On the third day, six of us gathered to help decorate. Since we were on a budget we all emptied our pantries of leftover candy, crackers, even spices and loose tea.

The hardest part was getting started, the vast expanse of brown bread was intimidating. What if we screwed up? Two ladies decided to be in charge of making trees and shrubs for the yard. After some thought, I grabbed a box of WheatThins and began tiling the roof. What we discovered is that a multitude of sins can be corrected with the creative placement of candy. Our most interesting ingrediant by far, was Asian Shrimp Chips, used on the front porch roof.  The red and green colors were perfect.  Five hours later, we had the majority done. My back was killing me from standing and bending over. There was something lacking though, we had to brighten it up another way. We called it a day and decided to finish the next.

It was one of our volunteers young daughter who came up with the idea of making Christmas lights with a strand of Twizzler and small pieces of balled up fruit roll-up attached. Brilliant! It was just what we needed to complete our traditional look. A child's creativity will always trump an adult.

We delivered our entry with fanfare as the Inn's employees oohed and ahhed. The competition was stiff, some houses were professionally done. In the end we came in third, behind two other companies who had pros on their side. That's okay though, the Woodlands is a huge supporter of Habitat and promised to change things up next year. All entries will have to donate to Habitat! How's that for Just Desserts? :-)