Gingerbread Greenhouse

[dragnlaw]

Our annual Gingerbread Weekend was cancelled this year (duh... thanks Covid). I did make some houses for the grandchildren here and in Toronto for them to do on their own...

This past summer my neighbours built a greenhouse. When I saw some Gingerbread Greenhouses on the internet, I thought, 'How cool'. I could make them one for Christmas. LOL

Last year I made a back hoe for them (he's a heavy equipment operator).
Entirely edible (other than the foil plate!) Candy rocks were really cool! and delish.

 

[dragnlaw]

So first step was to make a template. Then decided it was too big and so made a smaller one. Much better.

I had heard about using gelatin sheets for the windows and thought that would be much easier than melting sugar!

Mixed, rolled, baked, glued.. (thankfully, read another site that said to weight down til dry when gluing the gelatin sheets) then came gluing everything together.

 

[dragnlaw]

Had a brilliant idea to light the interior with those bottle lights you get at the $Store.

So while the gluing of the lights dried, made a gazillion little flowers. When I realized the gelatin sheets were so very transparent, felt obliged to actually put something in the greenhouse. Found some really stale marshmallows, doctored them up and made a couple extra for outside.

 

[dragnlaw]

Put some blue icing on the battery housing to look like a rain barrel... it overflowed.

A ton of other things I could have done but was pooping out. Started this project before Christmas but with going away for a week and other things, not to mention all the procrastinations because I wasn't sure what or even how I was going to do what next. So I decided to can the Xmas theme and go for Spring!

Finally finished today. Once all is dried, will then try to figure out how to get it across the road without doing a face plant in the 2 days of snow we've been having.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

That is beautiful!

 

[taxlady]

That is lovely and clever.

 

[Cooking Goddess]

Wow, dragn! That is amazing. Even Himself, he of little comment, said a big "wow". You done good.

 

[GotGarlic]

Wow, nice work!

 

[dragnlaw]

Thank you ALL so much. I appreciate the compliments!


Sorry my pictures are sideways (again) But they also seem fuzzy to boot. But maybe I'm still just tired. Neuropathy not letting me sleep well lately. (is that a good excuse?)

(My poor brother will be turning over in his grave looking at these, wondering why he even bothered to try and show me)

 

[Andy M.]

Amazing!

 

[Just Cooking]

ditto!!

Ross

 

[Kaneohegirlinaz]

Way cool dragn!

 

[dragnlaw]

Must say I have a satisfied grin on my face.

I have to tell you, after struggling with all the details, windows, gelatin sheets, figuring out design, baking and just starting to put together...

I was thinking how good these other people were, professional or not, did such beautiful work. I looked real close at one of the pictures I had printed out for suggestions and suddenly realized that these things were HUGE. The smallest was probably more than 12 inches high.

Mine is about 6" tall. No wonder I was getting so frustrated! I seem to have a knack for picking things I know absolutely nothing about. The Tin Man, this gingerbread, but I can say at least for Helios the Heron, I had a teacher!

 

[taxlady]

Where did you get the gelatin sheets? Online?

 

[dragnlaw]

I was going to order them on-line but originally I was hoping to do this in early December and didn't think I would get it on time. The sites I was looking at were all coming from Europe. In the end my nephew found a cake decorating place in Ottawa. They mailed me some.

 

[taxlady]

I was going to order them on-line but originally I was hoping to do this in early December and didn't think I would get it on time. The sites I was looking at were all coming from Europe. In the end my nephew found a cake decorating place in Ottawa. They mailed me some.

Cool.

I have been wanting to get some, because Danish recipes that call for gelatin always use sheets. It seemed too expensive to me, once shipping was added. I guess I'll just keep adjusting my Danish recipes.

 

[dragnlaw]

After I went thru all that rigamoreroll, my son pointed out to me that a lot of those places offered free shipping! Wha?? my bad

Taxy, email or pm me if you want the Ottawa address of the cake decorating place. They just stuck it in an envelope and didn't even charge the postage. Not really very expensive - well, I guess it depends on how much you need - I actually don't know the ratio to powder - an envelope per sheet?

 

[medtran49]

Totally Cool Dragon!

 

[dragnlaw]

thank you - thank you - thank you

am already thinking what I could do for next year. This one took so long in planning and execution, figured I had better get started now!

Almost forgot, one son suggested for the other son that I make a Star War Tie Fighter for his boys. Didn't work out quite like I wanted... (what else is new?) but I cut out this for them with some left over dough. I'll fix better for next year. So 2 houses and a Tie Fighter (not glued together).

 

[dragnlaw]

"another bump" (it's raining outside, I'm hiding from chores waiting)
The last 2 years with moving, have been a small dud for Gingerbread "weekends".
Can't seem to find the pics of the kids decorating their houses here. I was hoping to make a Christmas Carousel - only by the time I figured out the engineering part, with corrections along the way - Christmas was long gone and Valentine candy was around. Very crooked but we all had a good laugh at my foibles and yummy eating.
So here is my Valentines Carousel 2022

someone should have told me how difficult it is doing 6 sides - I'm NOT an engineer. Everything was trial by error. LOL