Step by step homemade baking recipes
This is the third video in our three part series on baking with Gingerbread. If you haven’t yet, make sure you check out the recipes for how to make Gingerbread Dough, and Gingerbread Men. This video is my favourite though as it was so much fun to make. I vaguely remember trying to make a gingerbread house from scratch as a teen but I think I tried to use cake or something as I remember the edges wouldn’t stand up or go together.
I did a lot of research before starting this project and the best tip I read was to use a soup can to keep the frame of the house up when you’re putting it together. It totally works and makes building the house so much easier. Did you think that I was classy when you saw my jar of Jamie Oliver pasta sauce? HAHA…I wanted to use my No Name soup of vegetarian chili but thought that might make me a little trashy for the viewers. Gotta keep up appearances!
Anyway, take this project on as you’ll LOVE it. It’s such a fabulous family task and you can let the kids go crazy decorating it.
“Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m a marbled gingerbread man!”
When I think of Christmas baking, of course gingerbread men come to mind! Making gingerbread men requires a really good dough recipe, so make sure you check ours out, because rolling out cookies to cut can be a pain in the bum. You can decorate these gingerbread men however you want, but I wanted to make sure that I showed you a different way to do them, in case you were up for a baking challenge this holiday.
Marbling the royal icing creates a really cool effect . . . almost psychedelic . . . and it’s surprisingly easy when I show you how to do it. You can use any colour combination that you want- I went with the traditional red and green, but I think pinks and purples would be pretty too. Pretty much any colour goes for Christmas now. I was at Target the other day and the Christmas bulb pack they were selling had pink, purple and aqua in it, wrap that up in some white sparkly garland and you totally have a non-traditional, but beautifully decorated house! I should have bought that stuff . . . what was I thinking? I’m off to go get it.
As a food YouTuber and blogger, I find myself trying to tell you how things taste when I post recipes. It is actually very hard to do and trying recipes for taste is something that you have to do yourself. What I like, might not be what you like (even though it should be) :). With Christmas right around the corner, what I love for seasonal tastes are gingerbread, eggnog and sugar cookies. So with this recipe for Eggnog Gingerbread trifle, I’m getting two of my favourites in one! If you like either of these flavours, you’ll love this! If you don’t like either, just make it anyway.
Every year in Kindergarten we make Gingerbread houses. This is the first year ever, where I have stopped to think about WHY we make Gingerbread houses? Seriously, what is the purpose of a Gingerbread house, and why does it tie in with the holiday season? Is it the Gingerbread Man’s fault? Is it Hanzel and Gretel’s? How does it tie in with Santa, and if you’re one of those religious types, how does it fit in with the birth of a baby in Bethlehem?
Upon a serious search of Wikipedia-Gingerbread, I’m really no better off. My understanding is mostly that it is a European tradition, based loosely on the Hanzel and Gretel fairy tale (I knew the fantasy of having a house made out of candy would have to have some blame), and that in some places, whole cities get together to build life like structures out of gingerbread! How cool would that be?
So I went searching for pictures to inspire the kids with, and here is a European inspired chalet with real looking snow on the roof! There are many more cool examples over at: socialcafemag.com
Santa's Underwear
Gingerbread Eggnog Trifle
This one is not on my Holiday Baking To Do List, but it should have been! I have a love for my trifle bowl . . . and it is a love that was put on hold for the last year as my trifle bowl went missing last Christmas! Thank goodness my parents found it at their house, put away with the Christmas decorations in the basement. It was just in time too . . . I was about to go in search of a replacement bowl.
I made this recipe up myself . . . I am sure there are 1000 recipes out there on the internet! I’m refusing to look as I don’t want to ruin future attempts of creativity and trying something new! If I don’t know that someone else has thought of it before, I am the genius!
For this recipe, I combined three of my favourite holiday tastes . . . gingerbread, shortbread, and eggnog! Mmmmm . . . I’m salivating at the thought . . . and I already ate (more than) my fair share!
Gingerbread Eggnog Trifle
Ingredients
1 package of Gingerbread Cookies
1 package of Shortbread Cookies
4 cups of Eggnog
2 packages of Vanilla Pudding
250 ml Whipped Cream
1. Make eggnog pudding by using eggnog instead of milk by following the vanilla pudding directions on the box.
2. Whip cream.
3. Crush shortbread cookies into crumbs.
Arrange trifle in these orders: gingerbread, pudding, shortbread, whipping cream . . . repeat until you get to the top. Decorate as you feel inspired to do so!
Gingerbread Layer
Pudding Layer
Shortbread Layer
Whipping Cream Layer
We enjoyed this trifle after Christmas dinner. It was so good, but our poor stomach’s barely had enough room to fit it in. Thank goodness for my 19 year old cousin Jeff, who came back for seconds. Boxing Day . . . we’ll be eating the leftovers!
Happy Holidays from my family to yours.
