Winter Festival - Gingerbread House


The object of this contest is to build a real life Gingerbread House using edible materials! This is not a digital contest, so no digital entries. You can't eat pixels.


Rules

1. Your Gingerbread House must be built by using any type of food. You are not required to use gingerbread. You are free to use crackers, other types of bread, chocolate, candy, etc. However, you must use real food in this contest! The small use of non food items (like toothpicks) are allowed to improve the structural integrity of your submission. They must be used sparingly though and it must be obvious that your submission consists of actual edible materials.

2. When building your Gingerbread House, you must take at least 3 pictures of the process with your Username and "2022 Winter Festival" physically visible. Here is an example of how this should look:


You do not need to post them in a grid like this. I just did this to save space.

Here is a link to last year's contest for reference:
2021 Winter Festival - Build a Gingerbread House

3. When you are finished with your entry, come back to this thread and post it here.

A Player Guide on How to Upload Images

4. You must create your entry on your own! You cannot have someone else build your Gingerbread House for you, although having some assistance is perfectly fine and reasonable. All submissions must also be brand new; you cannot use previous submissions. Lastly, please try and come up with your own unique designs. Obviously, using a kit is okay to do and those will probably be similar because kits are generally universal. What I am referring to would be copying someone else's previous design from a past contest and redoing it as your own; some of you have come up with some pretty awesome unique designs in the past!

If you have never created a Gingerbread House before, here are some handy tutorials to get you started:

Link 1 (Offsite)
Link 2 (Offsite)

5. All submissions must look like they required some measurable amount of effort in order to qualify for prizes. For example, stacking two slices of bread together is not going to qualify.

6. Please do not reserve posts. Only post when you are ready to submit an entry. If your entry is still ongoing, you may post early with the progress that you currently have and edit your post as you finish.

7. Please do not ping me unless you have a specific question or concern that I need to address. Thank you.

8. The due date for submitting your entry is by the end time of Forum Games for the Winter Festival. Please refer to the eventual Overview thread for this final date. The Overview thread will be posted once the Winter Festival officially begins.


Prizes

All submissions will be judged by Krinadon and Faiona. We will announce winners for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places. Everyone who submits a valid entry will be awarded very nice participation prizes as well as the Title: Gingerbread Architect.

All non-winning Participants will be entered into a drawing where 3 Lucky Winners will win 2,000, 1,000, and 500 Diamonds, respectively.

Above all else, be creative and have fun! These contests are just meant to be fun. =)

All prizes are subject to change. The list below serves as approximation of what to expect.


1st Place Winner(s)
Prize(s): 2,000 Diamonds, Free Stable, [Peerless Avatar Token] x1, 3-Visible Winter Festival Themed Pet of Choice (2-Vis if Majestic) x2, [Philter of Trait Disruption] x3


Falkinsey


2nd Place Winner(s)
Prize(s): 1,000 Diamonds, Free Stable, [Peerless Avatar Token] x1, 3-Visible Winter Festival Themed Pet of Choice (2-Vis if Majestic), [Philter of Trait Disruption] x1


Faeyla


3rd Place Winner(s)
Prize(s): 500 Diamonds, Free Stable, [Peerless Avatar Token] x1, 3-Visible Winter Festival Themed Pet of Choice (2-Vis if Majestic)


Acycorn


All Participants
Prize(s): Title: Gingerbread Architect, [Fabled Frost Essence] x2, [Premium Ice Water] x3, [Box of Ice Sculpting Supplies] x1, [Box of Ice Sculpting Agents] x3, [Avatar Item (Winter - Retired)] x3, [Frost Token] x1,000


1st Place Raffle Winner
Winner: Dragoil
Prize: 2,000

2nd Place Raffle Winner
Winner: Shadowized
Prize: 1,000

3rd Place Raffle Winner
Winner: Misskittyc
Prize: 500

Ngl I completely forgot to put the username until the end lmao, got too into making it, hope it still counts anyways. (Ignore the fact the username is written on a paper towel, I couldn't find any paper haha)

First I have to say that this was not a good day for me. Starting off I thought the day was the 27th all day instead of the 28th, so tech the date is wrong by one day. Then the gingerbread definitely beat me down. I bought a kit with the intentions of attempting to build my first ever house.. didn't realize it was prebuilt until I got it home not to mention it was broken anyhow. So I busted it up, used a cake I made for a base and made it up as I went along. I found out that regular icing, although tasty, does not work for this. Also.. my roof is made of toast because I couldn't get anything else to stay and still had to take pics fast so that it wouldn't collapse lol. What a mess! Without further adieu, here is Shadow's sad little house.
The Ingredients

Making the Cake Base

Adding the Walls (smeared in choco fudge icing that had parts of cake in it because the cake was sticking to the butter knife better than the icing was the cake when I iced the base)

Getting there.. though the ribbon on the wreath didn't work and as you can see, a butter knife is being used to hold one side up xD

And now :drum roll please: the final outcome. (Even the snowman looks sad about his house)

*The upside down deer was on a blanket I was using for a backdrop, please ignore it. : )*

I got it in my head that I really wanted to do a gingerbread tree house. So, after multiple sketches, I came up with a pattern that at least looked good on paper. :-P Then I made cardboard templets of everything except for the branches (those remained parchment paper patterns and are not in the picture) and covered them in foil.


One of many batches of dough


The tree trunk pieces cut out and ready to bake. They just barely fit on my baking sheet pans


All of the house pieces ready for assembly. I melted butterscotch candies for the windows.


I wasn't sure how well the branches were going to connect to the tree and while trying to get the first branch on, it fell and shattered into what felt like a million pieces. At that point I had so much time invested that I really didn't want to start over. So, I pieced the one branch back together with royal icing and managed to get all three branches attached. It's actually hard to see the third branch in back. It looks like it was hit with a snow storm, but turned out better than I feared.


For the roof, one set of panels are frosted with blue and white sprinkles, while the other set I cut mini marshmellows in half and glued them on with royal icing. The string of lights are mini m&ms glued to a piece of twizzlers candy with royal icing.


Closeup of the wreath on the front door. It was made by breaking up a Bobo bar and mixing it with green royal icing. I then broke off tiny pieces of twizzlers for the red berries.

First batch of gingerbread in process!



Many circles and rings of gingerbread baked and board covered in icing.



Starting to assemble parts to see how many more are needed.



Beginning to look vaguely like a castle :)



Continuing to add many, many icing rectangles to create the stone effect.



Time to start on some doors and windows.



Turrets under construction,using ice-ceam cones as a base.



Turrets on - just a few more details to add.



Completed castle front (taken with phone - makes the colour look different!)



and rear view



Side view



Other side view

Fresh baked!


Assembling!


Ready for decorating!



Decorated! ^^

So I was admiring all these lovely and classy and well-built gingerbread houses and thought to myself, that is so cool, I wanna make something like that!

Only there's two problems with this:

1. We've been having the greyest, wettest, drabbest, joy-suckingest winter for weeks and I Am Sick Of It

2. This is the kind of project that is irresistible to my kitschy tasteless over-the-top little gremlin heart, so really, classy and tasteful was never an option.

Instead I present to you:

Gingerbread House in Magical Fairyland Spring

Three pre-made kits' worth of gingerbead because I have big plans:





The basic floor plan established (please pay no attention to the runny windows and door; those are a problem for Future Ace who will surely find a way to make them look less messy)





Construction finished (please do pay attention to the tiny balcony on the upper floor because it is really cute but did not want to photograph well)





And tadaa, here we go:






Is it what you were looking for? Probably not.

Does it at least look nice? Well, there's pink edible glitter, so I dont think "nice" is a word that applies here.

Did I have an absolutely great time making it and does it fill my little gremlin heart with joy? Yes, absolutely, so thank you for this challenge and opportunity :-D

(and yes, all the flowers and butterflies are made from edible paper, so the entire thing can and will be eaten)

Okay, I really really tried but this was my first time doing this. I didn't use a pre-made or blueprint... a lesson for next time. I used graham crackers, icing, marshmallows, Swedish fish, gummy bears, instant coffee, nutella, etc.

so this year i got the condision that if i wanted to buy materials for making a gingerbreadhous i would have to make one togheter with my son. i did not mind, until we started XD

the making of the bater and everything went just fine^^


problems started when i put things on the table to cool off a bit more (becaus i needed space in the kitchen, it's small XD )
i told Finn he could not have them that they where cooling still and we would be needing them, he responded with an, Oke. So i went back into the kitchen and hear him eat. (i think he pretty much did it the moment i had set 1 step away XD )


no regret (i'm glad he liked the cookies, althow i was a littel bit bad, he was being totaly adorible and so happy with himself for grabbing and eating several of the cookies i would not stay mad at him longer then 2 seconds)


i had gotten myself a gingerbreadhous kit to make togheter, so i desited that maby that would be a saver option, i was mistaken... (i had got him some pistasios as snack, so he could eat those)

at first he was trying to help

and then his stomace toke over XD (and ofcours the pistasios where already eaten )



ended up telling my boyfriend i was not risking all my hard work to get eaten befor i could even put it togheter, withs ment back to evening for me to try and build (or lock myself in the kitchen).
turnet out to a smart choice becaus the walls had some weak spots^^' quit a bit of damage controll was needed trying to save what i made.




but it looks like so fare it's working^^

i wanted to make a water area agen, so i grabt my blue butterfly tea, and white tea and agar agar to make that happen (and added a littel bit of milk while on the plate the make it look a bit more frozen).

and i still had to finis the outerwalling.

i alsow found my food coloring powders (realy wish i had found them befor backing becaus that would have bin easyer XD, but at the same time i'm happy with how things turned out)
normaly i would say i painted the roses red, but since my littel hous don't have any roses i desided to do the bricks on the outerwall insted^^ (just the food coloring powder desolved in water)

got myself a more felxible version of edible paper this year (found it in a specialy candy store with lot's of older type of candie, unfortunatly in only came with a money print on it so that became the inside of the roof)





the adding of the water part


time to make some nuts a bit smaller so they can be used for the path to the hous. and the decorating of the roof (withs turned out a bit heavy for the tin chead of edibel paper ^^' ) i used coconut as snow here, it smelt so good!


as finising thouth some powderd snow.


and i wanted a few picks with daylight XD becaus it always makes things look diverent.





and my littel helper... well i tryed catching on camera while he was trying to grab at the hous and the tree, but he ended up looking quit inecent, almost as if he was not plannig anything XD

maby next year he will be abel to help (with other things then eating from the hous)