It occurs twice during the school year and its usually very stressful. I like to think of this dreaded week as “ The Final Stretch” the five most feared days before Winter Break! I’d be lying to you if I told you it’s a week of fun and joy but its really not, it’s a week that all kids fear most. Last year for my Culinary class our final exam was a written test and nothing more. However, this year our final exam is to build a ginger bread house. Now, this definitely takes the pressure off of studying and adds a little fun to the final stretch. Last week we prepared the ginger bread dough and royal icing in massive quantities. Originally I was going to make a ginger bread tree house but I got caught up in some other work and did not have time to start making new measures for stencils. Instead, I used the standard stencil, which looks nice, but I vowed to make my house look insanely awesome! For the windows I used blue, red, & green jolly ranchers, which melted perfect to create a stained glass look. I iced my 24 x 24 wood board with the white royal icing to give a snow effect. I also made a tree stencil with three sides to it for my cotton candy tree (which goes on last as cotton candy hardens when exposed to air for too long) outside the front door. I made my pine trees out of sugar cones, piped green icing, and edible silver pearls. I used snowcaps as shingles for the roof because everyone else is using Mini-Wheat’s or M&M’s, so I’m trying to be a little original. The coolest part of my board is Santa sitting in a hot tub in the back yard!
