Once upon a time, I got a text from my friend Charlotte. She suggested that I occasionally write posts about cooking disasters. I liked the idea, but didn’t think about it too much, because how often do I really ruin something so bad it burns to death, explodes, or sets off the fire alarm? No all the often. But then I made this gingerbread house and my meaning of disaster shifted.

I decided I want to make a gingerbread house from scratch back in October. I thought to myself, “it’ll be fun,” and also “you’ve been baking for awhile now, you can totally do this, and it will totally look great.” So, my confidence was strong that I could make something delicious (it was) and decent looking (it wasn’t). I chose a Mary Berry recipe, because I love her on the Great British Bake Off and I trust her recipes. This recipe makes a lot of cookie dough since the house is fairly tall. My first roadblock was that I started mixing the dry ingredients and realized I didn’t have enough ginger. Stupid rookie mistake. But then I went to the store, I made sure I had everything else and I started baking.

Foolishly, I decided to make this after work one day. Because it totally makes sense that after a long day on my feet talking to children, I really want to make an elaborate gingerbread house. Anyway, the cookie dough mixed together well enough and I divided it as the recipe suggested. The first ball of dough rolled out nicely and I cut out some shapes from the house’s template. It was hard to get it up and onto the parchment paper, but I managed. However, the subsequent balls of dough had started to dry out. The dough was getting flaky and crumbling off as I rolled it out with my rolling pin. I was getting so frustrated I started using my hands to flatten the dough and stick pieces together. You can see that this method led to lumps and wrinkles in the finished cookies (which I think also led to structural integrity issues later).

Finally I had the pieces cut out and they were baking in the oven. While they were baking I smashed apart some hard candies which were going to go in the windows of the house. It was like 8:30pm and I’m making a serious racket and the candies are barely breaking up. Ryan is looking at me like, “what are you murdering over there?” So I stopped smashing and just used whatever small bits I had. I pulled the cookies out of the oven, sprinkled the candies in the openings, and baked it some more. When they came out, the cookies looked nicely browned and the stars and windows had a lovely stained glass appearance.

However, I made yet another mistake. In taking out the tray I got the thumb of my oven mitt in one of the cookies and made a noticeable divot. Sigh . I was disappointed, but at this point my hope wasn’t lost that this house could still look amazing. I decided to let the cookies cool and I’d assemble them the next day. I was feeling frustrated and I knew I wouldn’t have a beautiful house if I was decorating with rage.

The arrow points to my thumb print of shame.

The next day, I removed the cookies from parchment paper. Some pieces came off easily. But the ones with the candies seemed to have fused with the parchment paper and I couldn’t get them off without breaking the candy. So instead of beautiful stained glass, I had broken windows. My house was going to look like a Christmas village that had been abandoned in the woods. I started to pout. And then a bottom corner under the window broke off. Pouting turned to melt down.

“The house is ruined!” I shouted.

“No,” said Ryan, “It’s just the back, it’ll be fine.”

Always the voice of reason, I decided to listen to Ryan and trudge on. I made the frosting and it was thick and fluffy and tasty. I iced the cake board and then started to assemble the walls of the house. I was following the instructions to the letter and I was feeling like it was coming together. I had 3 walls up, and was about to put on the back wall when one side wall fell over. UGH! The wall fell into the frosting on the cake board and now the house looked like it had snow up to the windows. I propped that wall back up, and then the other side wall fell over. Well at least it would be symmetrically messed up.

I started yelling at my house, about how it was hideous and ruined and terrible and wasn’t going to look nice at all. Now that I had put my thumb in the cookie, broken a wall, broken the windows, and had icing all over 50% of the the house I gave up hope. This was not going to be a beautiful magazine worthy gingerbread house. Now all I could do was cover it in sweets. I decided not to use a piping bag to decorate (why bother!) and I just used a knife, my fingers and some candies.

I also chose to give up on waiting. “Hey Ryan, it says I should let it dry over night and then put on the roof. Should I just put on the roof now anyway?” I asked.

And, I think, sensing my frustrating at this project that had already taken me two evenings, he said “yeah put the roof on.”  It all ready looked like an abandoned shack and waiting over night wasn’t going to fix that. So I used chopsticks as support beams – and Ryan said “real houses have support beams,” – and I placed the roof on top.

It actually looked kind of nice (from some angles). It is clearly homemade. It is not beautiful and won’t win any awards. It won’t get re-pinned on Pinterest or get picked up on BuzzFeed. But, I actually still felt proud of myself. I had made a gingerbread house entirely from scratch. So I took pictures of the house, warts and all, so I could share it. I took all the pictures I wanted, I put my camera down, then sat on the couch.

I sat down, and the house collapsed. I couldn’t help but laugh, and laugh hysterically, like Tom Hanks in the Money Pit (minute 2:18). This was not an ideal attempt at a gingerbread house. Stil, disaster might be a bit harsh as the cookies did taste really good. And it was house shaped for about 5 minutes. But, I learned that I like to bake so it tastes good and makes people happy. I’m not a baker who can make things beautiful, and that’s ok. So next time you feel bad that what you made doesn’t look like the picture, think of my gingerbread house and know you’re in good company.

If you’re still feeling brave and want to make your own gingerbread house I used this recipe from Mary Berry. It has a template which is nice. For other recipes, I’m really impressed by this recipe from Cavoletto. This recipe is for tiny houses that can hang on the edge of your mug of cocoa! I like it because it’s showing off a bit, but I also think smaller pieces might be easy to cut out and work with. I also like this recipe from Oh Sweet Day. Her decorations are lovely, but simple, and feel like I could actually replicate it. Finally, this haunted gingerbread house from Curry and Comfort is amazing and should just be looked at for enjoyment purposes.

Final point, is that this was SUPER messy. I mean 10 spoon messy and my scale only goes to 5 spoons. It was maximum messiness both days. I had mountains of dough flakes on the floor. I had icing on my face and hair. It was overwhelming and sort of impressive how big the mess was.

And if you are making a gingerbread house this year I want to hear about it and see it. Post about it in the comment below or send me pictures of your creations at cookingismessy@gmail.com. Good luck and happy holiday baking!

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I love today’s job. I’ve been there for over a year and a half, and I started as an intern. I’ve had such fun, I’ve gotten great learning opportunities, and I’ve made wonderful friends. So I decided to do something nice for my coworkers on my last day and make Abraham Lincoln’s favorite cake. I don’t know how the historical record proves this was his favorite cake, but the gift shop says it was his favorite so I’m rolling with it. They sell this recipe on a really cute kitchen towel. I was eager to try it, but also a bit daunted. There are a lot of steps, a lot of egg whites, and I needed an angel food pan. I did some searching and I found some angel food pans for $25-30. I love kitchen gadgets, but I didn’t want to spend $20+ on something I wouldn’t use that much. I reached out to friends and no one had an angel food pan. I looked on Craig’s List and Freecycle, And then I thought about eBay, and there are some great prices but  nothing would arrive before my last day. Yesterday I went to Giant to look for a disposable pan, and I found a real one for $9.20. Awesome deal, so I bought it.

I know I’m talking a lot about angel food pans, but I was a little intimidated. It’s two pieces because angel food is apparently really light and sticky and so having the bottom pop out makes it easier to remove the cake. I found this great Martha Stewart video about how to use an angel food pan. I thought it was helpful because before watching I didn’t know you’re supposed to let the pan cool while it’s inverted. Crazy, right? Anyway, I don’t even know if this cake is even technically angel food cake. It didn’t rise as much as Martha’s cake and it came out really easily without inverting it. Seriously, it was the cleanest cake removal I’ve ever done. I was so impressed by how clean the lines of the cake are, and you can see a picture in a little bit.

Ryan and I really liked the cake, and I hope my coworkers will too when I bring it to them in a few hours. The cake was moist, with a little crunch from the almonds. And also, the frosting is delicious! It hardens a bit as it sits, but when it’s freshly made and still warm, it is just like marshmallow fluff. It was so good. I kept “accidentally” getting it on spoons and my hands and then I just had to eat it to clean everything up. What a hardship.

Again, I thought this cake was really good but what would take it up a notch would be to drizzle on some strawberry or raspberry sauce.  I think it would really brighten the flavor. The original gift-shop-towel recipe does call for optional fruits but I didn’t use them because I really didn’t know where I’d find candied pineapple and crystallized cherries. Anyway, here’s to you Abraham Lincoln and to my coworkers. This is my adaptation of Lincoln’s cake. Thank you for a wonderful year and a half.

Ingredients:

Cake-

2 cups sugar

1 cup butter

3 cups flour

1 tsbp baking powder

1 cup milk

1 cup almonds finely chopped (you can buy this or just throw a bunch of whole almonds into a food processor)

6 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting – 

2 egg whites

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

Cake – 

1. Preheat oven to 350°

2. Grease and flour the angel food pan. First I greased it all up with butter. Then I poured  few tsps of flour into the pan. I shook it all around to coat the pan. I also used a silicon basting brush to get the flour into ever nook and cranny. Once it’s well floured, knock out excess flour into the sink or trash can.

3. Cream together the butter and sugar.

4. Sift flour and baking powder 3 times.

I took this picture because I almost never use my sifter and I was excited

5. Add 1/3 of the flour to the butter mixture. Mix. Add 1/3 of the milk to the mixture. Mix. Repeat until all the flour and milk have been added.

6. Add the almonds.

7. Beat egg whites until stiff. Fold them gently into the batter.

8. Add extract and mix.

9. Pour into the pan. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour. The top should be golden brown and if you insert a toothpick it should come out clean.

You can see my oven thermometer in the back left

10. Let it cool in the pan for 30 minutes.

11. Remove from pan and let it cool until you are ready to put on the frosting.

Doesn’t this cake have the smoothest edges?! It’s amazing.

Frosting – 

1. Beat egg whites until very stiff.

2. Combine sugar and water in a pot and bring it to a boil.

3. Boil until it spins a thread 5″ long. That means when you put a spoon in it, and then take it out, there’s a fine thin thread between the spoon and pan. This happens at about 240-245°.

4. Remove from heat, and add 1 tbsp of egg whites. Mix.

5. Slowly pour the sugar-water mixture into the rest of the egg whites.

6. Beat until icing forms peaks.

7. Fold in extract.

8. Ice your cake!

Messy Level: Medium-high.

Expert bakers probably have a more efficient use of materials. But for me, the home cook, I felt like I used a ton of dishes! I was going for ease of cooking, rather than ease of clean up. I used two bowls for the flour so I could sift back and forth three times. I used my KitchenAid Stand Mixer for the majority of the cake batter, but I also used a handheld electric mixer and bowl to beat all the egg whites. And, I needed a pot for the frosting. And of course, there’s all the measuring cups and spoons too. This cake takes a lot of work! But, just imagine how difficult it would have been for Mary Todd 150 years ago!

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