Mini Gingerbread House

Mini gingerbread houses!  Oh what fun it is to bling out our house, hey!  Instead of making one big gingerbread house to adorn our Christmas table we decided this year to make lotsa mini gingerbread houses so that we could spread the love by gifting them to friends and family.  

These mini ginger bread houses are soooo cute, if I say so myself, and just the perfect little gift.   My little girl and I had so much fun blinging these wee houses and are totally excited for gift opening day!

Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 3 自製薑餅屋

The back of our gingerbread house

Dear readers, this is the last day!  I have to admit it, this little gingerbread house took longer to do (and a caused a bit of nervous hair tearing) than I thought it would...but what can I say, it was worth it.

There's nothing quite like a house made completely of candy and cookies, not when I was a little girl reading over and over again the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel and the little candy house they found nestled in the woods, and not even now when I'm all grown up and seen, well, lots of strange and wonderful things.  

When my little girl and I finally finished our little gingerbread house and it was sitting so pretty on our table...it was just the feeling of magic...I felt almost as if we were transported to that fairy forest, looking through the trees, eyes big with wonder, peeking at a house delightfully  and completely made of candy, with a wicked wee witch hiding inside...

Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 2

We're making a Hansel and Gretel inspired gingerbread house!  This is Day 2 of our step by step guide to making your own gingerbread house where we construct the gingerbread house from the gingerbread shapes baked on Day 1.  It's house construction time!

Check out our previous post Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 1 to find the recipe for gingerbread dough, our downloadable gingerbread house templates and step by step instructions for making and baking the dough, .  

To find out how we decorated the candy house and get tips on which candies make the best decoration please see our next post Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 3.

Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 1

My favorite time of the year, Christmas season, is near to hand and, inspired by that age old Brothers Grimm fairy tale, we made a Hansel and Gretel themed Gingerbread House!!  Do you remember the part in the original tale where the brother and sister, abandoned in the woods and very hungry, find a life sized gingerbread house:

"On they walked and walked, til suddenly they came upon a strange cottage in the middle of a glade.

     'This is chocolate!' gasped Hansel as he broke a lump of plaster from the wall.

     'And this is icing!' exclaimed Gretel, putting another piece of wall in her mouth.  Starving but delighted, the children began to eat pieces of candy broken off the cottage." 

~Hansel and Gretel from Grimm's Fairy Tales, 1812

Guide to Choosing Tofu 豆腐

Personifying simplicity and minimalism.  Yet so obliging and ready to please.  Oh wonderful Tofu!  What other food stuff could compare to you, so coy and sculpturesque on my little kitchen counter?  Tofu, or 豆腐, is indeed a magical food.  It is so yummy and versatile that you can find it everywhere and in everything.  In order to choose what type of tofu best suits your needs, here is a simple guide.

Dad's Guide to Choosing Watermelon

Published: 2011-09-25

What is summer without watermelons, right?  It's the perfect fruit, both humble and sublime.  Some of you are probably wondering why I am writing about watermelons in late September, but you must realize that in Hong Kong summers last forever, or at least until end of Sept or sometime even until end of November!

My Dad, or 爸爸 taught me the way to choose a good watermelon long ago when we were living in Texas.  Like me, he loved watermelons with a passion and we would come home with huge whoppers of melons, the like of which I haven't seen since (everything really is bigger in Texas), and then it would be scoop after scoop of that red, juicy, to die for watermelon flesh filling you up with all the coolness and loving sweetness that you could desire. 

In Hong Kong we haven't eaten that much watermelon, mostly because the watermelons always suck once we get them home and open them. I thought it was me or us, that we just didn't get the, you know, the Tao of the Melon.