On Sunday we made Luke’s childhood Christmas dreams come true by putting together and decorating a gingerbread house! We were also hoping to participate in the Mummer’s Parade again this year, but Elizabeth was busy with other activities on Saturday.
Gingerbread was first baked in Europe in the Medieval Period and it is believed that German lebkuchen (aka gingerbread) was the first baked good traditionally linked to Christmas. It was originally made with breadcrumbs boiled in honey along with ginger and other spices. In the 17th century, gingerbread baking became recognized as a profession in Germany and France so only professionals were allowed to bake gingerbread, except for at Christmas and Easter! The story goes that creating gingerbread houses started in the 1800s after the Brothers Grimm’s story of Hansel and Gretel was published.
Now that everyone is acquainted with the history of gingerbread, let’s jump ahead a couple of centuries to 2014:
Earlier in the week, we dropped into Bulk Barn to get some supplies for our gingerbread house. We purchased everything there, so it was a great one-stop shop.
Now that everyone is acquainted with the history of gingerbread, let’s jump ahead a couple of centuries to 2014:
Earlier in the week, we dropped into Bulk Barn to get some supplies for our gingerbread house. We purchased everything there, so it was a great one-stop shop.
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On Sunday, we decided to take a couple of standard shortcuts by opting not to make everything from scratch… and we don’t regret anything. It gave us extra time for decorating. We took the approach of putting together the gingerbread house before decorating it because that’s what Elizabeth had done in the past. However Luke, being a gingerbread newbie, assumed that you decorate the pieces of gingerbread and then glue the house together. And for the record, the internet says it can be done both ways - who knew?!
We had a lot of fun putting the gingerbread house together and decorating it while listening to Christmas music. We spent 1.5 hours in total decorating it and we were pretty pleased with the results. Especially the little gingerbread man poking his head out of a window in the back of the house, and the snow covering the ground.
Although, now we’re not sure who’s going to eat all of it (including the extra candy that didn’t make it into the final product).
We’ll be heading to the UK on Saturday for a couple of weeks, so we may be slow on our next few posts! But we’ll be spending Christmas in England for the second year in a row. To tide you over, here are our posts from our trip last year:
A Week in Bath, UK
London Weekend
And here are some more pictures of our gingerbread masterpiece:
We’ll be heading to the UK on Saturday for a couple of weeks, so we may be slow on our next few posts! But we’ll be spending Christmas in England for the second year in a row. To tide you over, here are our posts from our trip last year:
A Week in Bath, UK
London Weekend
And here are some more pictures of our gingerbread masterpiece:
