When I saw the entries for this challenge last year, I knew I had to take part once the chance would come around again, but when the time had come it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to build.
I live in Germany, and grew up close to the French border, which meant rather frequent trips to the French region of Alsace when I was a kid, and this is where the inspiration for my entry came from. Many beautiful timber-framed houses can be found all over Germany, but the smaller houses I saw in old Alsatian villages always struck me as especially quaint and welcoming.
And with their often humble size and not-quite-straight walls they seemed to lend themselves to being build out of gingerbread
But now, on to the pictures:
My timber-framed gingerbread house
From a different angle
Except for the base (cardboard) and the lighting (a chain of Christmas lights pushed through a hole in the base) everything is edible.
The snow is made of royal icing and coconut flakes, all the walls and the base of the roof are made of gingerbread and the window panes are made of gelatine leaves with details that were painted on with melted chocolate.
I imprinted the outlines of the timbers into the dough before baking, then I painted the timbers with melted chocolate.
Now for some more detailed views...
The roof, tiled with cookies.
The chimney is made of gingerbread, again painted with melted chocolate and decorated with icing.
The well, made of round nougat cookies I cut in half.
Here you can see the door with the Christmas wreath (made of colored icing) and the hazlenut cobblestone path...
This image shows probably my favorite detail - a stack of firewood made of pretzel sticks.
...Aaaand finally, just another shot I liked because it makes my little gingerbread house look so tall and almost real
So, that's it - C&C are very welcome.
Thanks for letting me share, I hope you enjoyed it!
*edited for spelling*
