My ginger bread mid-term

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!

I used a quenelle technique (rolling 2 spoons together) to coat a gumball in skin colored frosting to make my Santa’s head. I had no clue what to make a fence out of; I was looking for originality again. I decided to use wafers (those cookies with cream sandwiched between that a plastic/cardboard type cookie texture). I added frosting and coconut to the top of them to make it look like snow had piled on top of the fence. Being the last to finish, I was incredibly happy to be finished. I ended up with an “F”…. just kidding I got 200/200! I hope you like it just as much as I do, its sitting in my foyer with hair spray on it to preserve it… I guess I won’t be eating it. Keep on Cooking!