Every few years I get gingerdead amnesia and forget what a colossal mess it is. Then about two thirds of the way into decorating gingerdead, I wonder why in the world am I doing this to myself again.
The stages of gingerdeading are:
"Hey we should decorate gingerbread, it'll be fun!"
"Why are these stupid walls not staying together?"
"Why doesn't this stupid icing stick to anything else but me?"
"Let's put a decorative border right...ok let's put a big ugly blob of icing right here."
"That actually looks pretty good...and it just fell off. Fine just slap on more icing and mash the decorations into."
"This just looks like crap now."
"Ugh, is there any surface that isn't covered in sugar?"
"I'm tired and sticky and I just want to be done."
"Duck it, it's good enough."
Last year I said I'd make a dark tower using the Wilton lighthouse and Oreo candy canes and that's what I did.
The Oreo candy canes taste like Tootsie Rolls. Imagine sucking on tootsie rolls instead of chewing them. Yeah, exactly. Also the quality control is non-existent. The last few inches weren't even round and weirdly wavy. Like the candy cane making machine hiccupped while trying to hold in a fart. Also they started to melt and get sticky in my hands while trying to break them, and I have cold, dry vampire hands. I won't ever buy them again.
The lighthouse worked out pretty well as a tower. A short, pudgy tower, but still a tower that didn't require any real effort on my part. I used the pieces meant to be an entrance to add a few more inches on top. The very top piece I sawed a little notch out of it with a serrated knife. It made a huge mess, but worked really well.
I used Wilton black color mist to cover the pieces. I put on two light coats prior to assembly (picture is after one coat) and touched up some areas after.
The spray is really fine and creates a cloud that smells horrible and coats everything in the blast area. I made a baking soda and water paste that did a good job scrubbing it off the countertop.
I wouldn't use this on anything I was actually going to eat, but for gingerdead it's perfect.
My only regret is toward the end when I got slap happy with the icing and my fingers were smeared with it, I touched a few places and that really shows up against the black.
The decorations are pretty simple, mostly pasted on molded candy melts.
The big green skull is one of these gummy skulls I got at the grocery store. We didn't think they tasted very good, but that doesn't matter for this use. The bow is a sour patch kid gummy.
The "field of roses" is chopped up red gumdrops tossed in red sugar. My vision was to surround the dark tower, but my patience in chopping up gumdrops didn't extend that far. Also I ran out of red icing. Actually I had a whole other pouch of it. I was sharing the one that came with the kit the kids were using, and hadn't touched the one that came with the lighthouse. But I was at the "Duck it, I'm done." stage by that point.
The one thing that I really liked in all this was the marshmallow skulls. Or are they ghoul heads? Ooh mini green marshmallows would make even better ghoul heads. I painted black gel coloring on the marshmallows with a toothpick. It doesn't take much, just a few dots with the point and then angle the toothpick to spread it out.
I had some black licorice caramels, which I fully intended to roll flat and cut out little "bricks" to add texture to my tower. Until I started and realized what a pain in the Krampus that was going to be. A few of the head pikes are coated with the licorice and then I realized how long that was going to take, not to mention how sticky it was. So I colored the toothpicks with food coloring.
I like black licorice and was hoping these would be tasty, but they had a weird aftertaste.
And that's all I have to say about adventures in gingerdeading this year.
