In 2007, my then boyfriend (now husband) and I got ambitious: We would build gingerbread houses. He had a recipe for good, sturdy gingerbread walls and royal icing that could effectively mortar real bricks if we needed it to. What we didn’t have is a Kitchen Aid Mixer.
Have you ever tried to mix hard gingerbread by hand?
Hours later…
The place was a mess. We were bleary-eyed and sore of hand and arm from mixing impossibly hard ginger building material. Our half-constructed houses lacked roofs and we lacked the will to continue, but being in our very early twenties we persevered. We made “stained glass” windows out of sugar and food coloring, and I designed my house to look like a Tudor mansion, complete with its own little Gingerbread Lord and Lady. They were cute. We were proud! We finished around midnight. And we have never made gingerbread houses since (though we did get a Kitchen Aid Mixer for Christmas not long after).
Gingerbread is quintessentially European, even though it was originally brought to Europe by an Armenian monk sometime in the 10th century. Market Drayton in Shropshire, England became known for its gingerbread, and Queen Elizabeth I served gingerbread men made to resemble her important guests and foreign dignitaries (I imagine her pointedly chomping off the gingerbread heads of people she didn’t like – I mean, wouldn’t you?).
However, Nuremberg holds the title of “Gingerbread Capital of the World” – as early as the 1600’s, the guild there employed master bakers to create works of art out of gingerbread. In fact, to even bake gingerbread in many European countries, you had to be a member of the professional gingerbread-baking guild (except for Christmas and Easter, when everyone was allowed to bake it). Don’t ask me how they enforced that one.
With all this baking and shaping going on, it’s surprising that the first gingerbread houses didn’t appear until the 1800’s in Germany – as a result of the Grimm’s fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. I know that story made me want to eat a giant candy house when I was a kid – who wouldn’t!?
But, for me, my history with gingerbread begins and ends with those two monumental efforts we made in 2007. Never again. Never. Again.
What’s your best or worst Christmas food memory? Tell me in the comments, and if you link to your blog, I’ll share the link with WanderFood’s Facebook Fans this week!