Extreme Gingerbread

Here it is, the project I've been alluding to for a week! This is the reason my hands have been covered in shortening, frosting, and other stickiness for the past week, and the reason that my house has been a complete disaster area!

Our Bishop works for the Salt Lake Multi-Cultural Center. They have an amazing Christmas display every year, featuring Christmas trees, nutcrackers, wreaths, Nativity sets and Gingerbread houses from all over the world. He did not have any church groups entering a Gingerbread house this year, so he asked the Young Women in the ward to do one as a service project...

The Young Woman's President (Brandie Paterakis who is one of the most amazing women I have ever met... and yes, she was also the witch of a few posts ago) decided that we should make a replica of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple (for those of you who don't know, this LDS Temple was just built and dedicated this summer, and is about 10 minutes from my house). Her Grandmother is an expert Gingerbread maker, so they got together last Monday and designed, baked and built the gingerbread house with real gingerbread, using sugar and molasses as the glue. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the Temple when it was in this stage...

Monday afternoon Brandie dropped it off at my house and I got to work!! I made Marshmallow Fondant (quite tasty compared to the real stuff, and 2 batches of it only cost me $4, so you can't get much better than that!) and covered the Temple structure in the rolled out Fondant. After putting on the first piece I realized that I would have to put on another layer of Fondant in order to hide the darkness of the gingerbread fully. Bear in mind this is my first real attempt at fondant on anything... so it was quite the experiment.

I also decided to try my hand at pulling sugar to make the Angel Moroni for the top, the windows and the fountain... I started at 10:30pm which was my first mistake. The second mistake wasn't my fault though-- EmmaRay woke up at 11:15 screaming, coughing and throwing up, just as the sugar reached the right temperature. So, it overcooked a bit. I was able to pull the sugar and mold it under the heat of a lamp. I made an okay Angel Moroni statue (1 inch tall), and imprinted the windows with little stars just like the real thing, and I tried and tried to do the fountain... finally got something to work okay enough and called it quits at 1am.

The next morning Cadence ran downstairs to look at the Temple, and broke the fountain. Oh well. A few hours later I took the Moroni out of the refrigerator where I had it setting up and discovered that something must be wrong with the way I did the sugar, because the trumpet and his arms drooped. Hmmm.... plan B.

Tuesday afternoon I finished covering the Temple structure and the board it stood on in Fondant. Here's the great reveal:

Don't worry, it gets better!

The next step I had Michael help me with, which was putting the pillars and other pieces of the Temple on. I also made white chocolate "plastic" which was another experiment, and made the sidewalks, base of the fountain, flower beds, flower pots, and put the finishing trim on the Temple with this stuff. Works really well... I would definitely recommend this recipe to anyone who wants to make edible flowers/accessories for cake decorating.

So, here is the Temple, structurally complete!

But wait, we're not done yet! Now the real fun began! Thursday I got busy making flowers from gum paste (my usual flower medium for cakes)... the challenge though was to make them all mini, considering I only have two cutters small enough, and I didn't want everything to be identical. Thursday afternoon the Young Women (and Brandie) came over to help make the flowers.... probably not the most help I've ever had on a project, but at least the girls showed up. Thursday and Friday I spent making more flowers and attaching them. Saturday we went to Logan to play with Michael's family. Sunday afternoon I spent making more flowers and greenery and mini benches....

Monday Brandie came over and helped make more flowers while I attached flowers to the Temple grounds. We found out we were supposed to deliver the Temple by 4 o'clock that afternoon, so now we were in a time crunch. The original plan was to make little people to sit and stand around the Temple grounds, but due to time constraints and the amount of effort already put in to this project we decided not to make them... ok, so really we just didn't know how to make realistic looking little mini people and we figured the Temple looked cool enough as it was.

I brushed the whole Temple with Pearl dust to make it shimmer, and sprinkled it with cake glitter for a little extra sparkle. Oh, did I mention I made a new Angel Moroni and fountain with gum paste? I attached those on too and made them sparkle.... and I also had made trees with the chocolate plastic, so we got those to stand up by themselves and put flowers on them. And I attached the windows to the front and sides. Excited to see it yet?

Just ignore all the bits and pieces on the counter and the mess everywhere around! Like I said, this project took over life for a full week!!The BackSidesFountainMoroni on Top

The scary part was transporting it from my house to the Multi Cultural Center, but amazingly it made it with the Angel Moroni AND the trees still intact!! Woohoo! We walked in just as the Bishop came out of his office and his jaw dropped open. He led us in to the gingerbread house room and set up a stand alone glass table for the Temple to go on, and had someone beam a spotlight straight down on it. We got comments that it actually looked like marble!

For you locals you can go and see the whole Christmas display (free entrance) starting Friday night (November 20th) at 5:30, through December. The MultiCultural Center is off of Redwood Road and 3100 South in West Valley City (just go East off of 3100 South all the way in to the parking lot). Remember to vote for your favorite!! :)