The Gingerbread House is typically associated with Christmas but I don’t see why you couldn’t use a gingerbread design to celebrate many of the Holidays we share this time of year.  It doesn’t even have to be a house, the beauty of gingerbread is you can carve it and make it into just about any design you desire.

Now it all starts with a good, simple recipe that is easy to cut into shapes and holds those shapes well when it bakes.  I found this one on Epicurious.  This makes plenty of gingerbread to build a good sized design.  If you plan to eat the gingerbread, I would add more of each of the spices.  It’s good as is, but for my tastes, it would be better with a bit more spice.  Oh and you don’t need to let the dough sit for 6 hours.  1 hour is really all the dough needs.  So start out by making your dough and get it into the fridge to chill.

Now create a design.  That same recipe offers a great starting point with a simple house.  I recommend actually drawing out their house on paper or cardboard and assembling it to give you a sense of scale and how much the gingerbread will build.  I felt like I had enough gingerbread to make about 2 of those houses from the amount of gingerbread the recipe made.  Now that you know the scale of the original house, design something yourself.

I was inspired by a classic 1970’s TV home.  No particular reason other than it seemed like a silly, fun thing to build.  So I started by drawing and cutting out the various pieces.

You really need to draw it all out AND assemble the house to make sure it all comes together.   I highly recommend an Xacto or Sheetrock knife to cut the paper using a straight edge.   Just tape the pieces together and make sure it comes together like you want it to.  Oh and label all the pieces so you remember what they are when you break the template apart to cut the gingerbread.

The roof was the trickiest part because it’s a two piece roof with a long slope on one end of the front of the house with a side roof coming in at a steep angle.   I was able to make it work, not perfectly but good enough to cover the mistakes with icing later.

Now it was time to cut the shapes into gingerbread.   I put parchment paper on either side of the dough as I rolled it out to keep it from sticking to the board and the roller.  Then laid the template shapes onto the dough and cut through both layers of parchment.  Remove the top layer of gingerbread, but LEAVE the bottom layer attached to keep it from sticking to the baking pan.

Something to keep in mind is that any pieces that will be inside the house and not seen, such as supports for the roof, can actually be cut out of stiff cardboard.  There’s no need to bake interior supports.  This was my very first gingerbread house so I didn’t think of that, but I will next year!

Now you bake the pieces, let cool completely and start assembling.  Well actually I recommend you do a bit of the decorating while the pieces are flat as it’s easier.  The royal icing was always a bit too thick, it really does need to be a bit thinner to be more sticky to hold the pieces.  Just cut the corner of a ziplock bag to use for piping the icing.  As you assemble, anything that you have pre-attached to the walls may fall off, but you can just stick them back on.

Be sure to have a nice solid platform to build your house on such as a thick cardboard base.  I cut a piece of thick cardboard and covered it with parchment paper.  This makes it easy to move the house around once it’s built.

I’ll admit the initial assembly of the house was a bit ugly.  Could not get the first three walls to stand up square.  I ended up putting a piece of cardboard in as support to help these first pieces stay up and used a few coffee mugs to keep the very heavy “gumdrop wall” from falling forward.  Then it was actually fairly easy to get all the walls up.  Some of the baked walls didn’t quite line up, but that’s what icing and decorations are for!

For trimming the baked pieces, you need a REALLY sharp knife, such a straight razor knife and a light touch.  Just let the sharp blade do all the work with just a little pressure.  It took me about 10 cuts across the gingerbread to get it to cut all the way through, but I didn’t break anything and got clean cuts.

So this project took one day.  A lazy Sunday afternoon and it was fun.   It was a reminder that the Holidays should be fun.  So get your hands a little dirty, make something silly and have a little fun!  Save the stress for when you’re back in the office.

Oh and in case you’re wondering, it was “The Brady Bunch” house that was the inspiration for my design.  I drew my design from this photo.  Why be normal, right?

The post Take Time for Fun over the Holidays! appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

We all get one shot at this thing called life and while it’s important to stay on top of what makes us all successful in the industry, you also have take time to step back, unplug and enjoy “other things.”  I’ve found that my love of “other things” has helped me be more successful in my “day job.”  For instance, my love of cooking gave me an immediate connection with Alton Brown when I met him the first time on the set of “Good Eats.”  I was blown away by all the “toys” in his kitchen and we spent as much time talking about cooking and the toys as we did the animations I was originally asked to come in to discuss.  When you enjoy life and have other pursuits, you can have some common interests beyond technology to chat about with both colleagues and clients.   So I’m starting a new series on this blog, “Get A Life!” where I’m just going to share some of the things I love to do outside work and I’ll get some of my friends to join in as well.

I’ve found a love of cooking to be common among many of my colleagues and in the past I’ve blogged extensively about my family’s “Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes” which I’ll repeat here on this very blog soon.  But today, I’m here to share with you an incredible “Italian” Thanksgiving meal that I prepared along with my colleague, Kylee Wall (@kyl33t) who also loves to cook and bake.  The menu and recipes were all prepared by Chef Marco Canora and featured in La Cucina Italiana Magazine.  This is one of my favorite cooking magazines and Marco brought an Italian accent to the traditional American Thanksgiving meal.   The meal is quite simple to make with little stress and these recipes would make a welcome addition to any holiday meal or gathering in your home.

The Menu

Roasted fennel soup with cranberries and hazelnuts

Butternut squash risotto with mostarda di cremona, amaretti cookies and fried sage leaves

Roast turkey with garlic, sage and orange

Caramelized leek and sage stuffing

Cauliflower sformato

Mushrooms in parchment paper

Broccoli rabe with chili and garlic

Homemade meat broth

Pine nut pie

The recipes and a cooking schedule can be found here in the article “Thanksgiving With An Italian Accent.”

Some Notes on the Menu.

My wife is a vegetarian so we substituted vegetable broth for all the recipes except the Gravy so I did not bother to make the meat broth.  This is an entirely vegetarian meal if you go that route with the exception of the turkey and gravy.   If you believe you are not a fan of Fennel, and I count myself among you because I hate black licorice, do not let that sway you from making the Fennel soup.  It is simply amazing and I believe the roasting removes all that licorice type flavor.  For the Risotto we omitted the Mostarda di Cremona because it did not sound very appetizing and in lieu of ameretti cookies, we used roasted walnuts.  And definitely do the fried Sage leaves, we’ve never done that before and they were awesome.  For the Sformato, we could not find a ring pan so we used an angel food non-stick pan and it worked out extremely well.  Did not brown up exactly like the photos in the recipe but I came up with a solution to get it close.   Be sure to check out his cooking schedule that is provided with the recipe, we followed it and that made the entire meal simple and easy to prepare.  Serve the meal in courses like he describes with Soup first, then the Risotto, then the main meal.  It’s a nice pace this way and you just give small portions of the first two courses to get the meal started.

So here’s a look at how our versions of the menu turned out.

Roasted fennel soup with cranberries and hazelnuts

Roasting Fennel and Onions

Transfer the vegetables to veggie broth to continue cooking.

Puree the soup.

Finished soup with fresh drizzle of olive oil, roasted hazelnuts and chopped craisin garnish.

Butternut squash risotto with toasted walnuts and fried sage leaves

Roasted and pureed butternut squash

Final stages of the Risotto after the diced squash has been added.

Frying the Sage leaves, takes only seconds, incredible addition.

Butternut Squash Risotto topped with roasted walnuts, fresh parmesan and fried sage leaf.

Roast turkey with garlic, sage and orange

Heads chopped off garlic, making oil / sage / orange rub for turkey

Massaging the oil all around the turkey.

Bagging up the bird, I use oven bags for my birds to keep them very moist. They also cut about 1 hour off cooking time.

The roasted bird.

Sliced and ready for serving.

Carmelized Leek and Sage Stuffing.

Slice leeks lengthwise, then into small slices.

After chopping the leeks, clean thoroughly in a bowl.

Fresh Artisan bread from Costco, yep, Costco.

Cubed bread toasted in the oven.

Stuffing prepped and ready for the oven.  Two pans worked out nice so we could serve one and leave the other for later.

The finished stuffing, incredible.

Cauliflower sformato

Finely chop the cauliflower.

Mixing all the ingredients together.

Very well buttered and breadcrumbed angel food pan

Lightly browned from the oven.

After allowing to fully cool, we flipped it out, not as browned as the picture.

I dusted the top of the Sformato with more breadcrumb and broiled it for a few minutes to get the crust.

Mushrooms in parchment paper

Mix of mushrooms from Costco

Kylee sauteeing the shrooms.

Beautifully sauteed mushrooms.

Parchment in a “clamshell”

Folded and sealed parchment.

The finished product.

Broccoli rabe with chili and garlic

Finished product, super easy to make.

Pine nut pie

Finished Pine Nut Pie.

It’s like a pecan pie, but with pine nuts instead.

Fresh hot chocolate. 4oz 60% or darker chocolate melted in a double boiler in 2 tsp of water, add one cup of warmed milk, stir until warmed through, add sugar to taste. Makes two servings.

Happy Eats from Walter, Nathan and Kylee!

The post Get a Life! Part 1 of a continuing series – Recipes from the Kitchen appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.