There are couple of barriers to achieving a wood-fired pizza at home. The two big ones are getting a suitable facsimile of a pizza oven, and getting a decent dough in the right shape at the right place at the right time. I’m happy to say that I’ve worked out a few methods that I can stand behind and recommend. Be careful, though. Once you know this information you can not unknow it. And if you end up making nightly pizzas… well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The dough recipe

First things first: the crust. We all know that a good crust makes a good pizza. It has to be chewy, slightly charred and have the right balance of crispy outside to pliant interior. You don’t have to use my dough recipe. Not that my recipe isn’t good (it is!), but I wouldn’t want you to think that there is something secret in my recipe that will make your dough come out differently than every other dough. In fact, the best doughs undoubtedly come from lengthy fermentation using sponges and starters, but let’s stick with a “quick” recipe for the moment. Whatever the source of your recipe, there are a few very important things it has to have to yield a quality crust.  1. Bread flour. Bread flour has a higher gluten content than all purpose flour– that gluten is the key to getting a chewy, stretchy dough. 2. Long, slow kneading. Once again, it’s all about the gluten. It takes time and agitation  for the gluten proteins to connect and form a web that will give your dough it’s structure. I use a dough hook in a stand mixer and let the whole thing mix on the lowest speed for at least ten minutes. (Though some purists insist on hand kneading.) At this point the dough should look smooth and stretch into a long melted-mozzarella-like string when you lift the dough hook out. Waiting to add the salt and oil until after the initial mixing will also ensure that you get the best gluten development. 3. Proper hydration. In bread baking, the general rule is that the wetter your dough is, the bigger holes in your finished bread. In pizza, you want a dough with large well developed holes.(You know, the kind that will swell up and char to perfection.) So you need to have a very wet dough. Wet doughs can be a bit tricky to work with (which is why you’ll find lots of recipes for stiff pizza dough out there. I’d say at you want at least 1/3 the volume of water to the volume of flour. (Some recipes, including mine, may be as much as is ½ the volume of water to flour.) If you’ve developed your gluten sufficiently, even a wet dough will be workable.

Shaping the dough

It isn’t actually that tricky to shape a pizza dough by hand. (As long as you don’t have your heart set on launching the dough gracefully into the air and catching it with dancerly elegance.) But don’t even think of using a rolling pin– the hand stretching is crucial to achieving the correct dough consistency. 1. Weigh your dough. For my recipe each 10″ pizza will use about 170 grams of dough. If you don’t have a scale, sure, you can just eyeball equal portions. But if you want to practice getting that perfect, just-the-right-thickness crust, it helps to know exactly how much dough you are starting with.  2. Let it rest. Gluten is elastic– this means it tends to spring back to the shape that it was in before. After you’ve tucked your dough into a ball, let it rest at least five minutes. It will be much more cooperative when you try to stretch it.  3. Cut parchment rounds. There’s nothing traditional about this one, I’m afraid. But I find cutting rounds of parchment to be incredibly helpful. Cut them to the exact size of the surface you’ll be cooking your pizza on, and you’ll know exactly how large a circle you should be stretching your dough to. And it also makes transferring your pizza into the oven a snap. Yes, it is possible to transfer a pizza using just cornmeal or semolina. But, sadly,  I am not a professional pizziaola.  And I cannot accept the possibility (inevitability?) of the occasional torn, dropped, burned and ruined pizza while I work out the kinks in my technique. So I’ll stick to my parchment rounds, thank you.  4. Stretch & press. Now that your dough is ready to be shaped, pick it up over two fists (no pointy fingers that might poke holes through the dough). Rock the dough back and forth between your two fists, letting gravity stretch the dough out. Try to focus your stretching at the outside rim of the pizza, you don’t want to stretch the inside to a paper-thin sheet. Gently set your dough down onto your parchment round. Reach your fingers underneath the thicker edges and stretch the dough out to the edge of the parchment sheet. Use your fingertips to dimple the surface of the dough all over. This will ensure that you don’t get any huge dough bubbles that might create a pizza-topped balloon in the oven. You can now top the pizza with whatever you like… but use a light hand with toppings for this style of pizza. This style of pizza will not do well buried in molten cheese and laden with mounds of toppings.

The oven

Pizza ovens heat up much hotter than your oven can (anywhere from 800- 1000 F). And since my little oven tops out at 500, there’s simply no way that I could get a crust similar to one baked in a real pizza oven, right? Well, sort of. I have heard intriguing rumors of a technique to hack a home pizza oven and decided it was time to investigate. The scheme is to heat a cast iron skillet on your stovetop, then bake the pizza on that just a few inches underneath a broiler and you’ve got a cooking environment that looks promisingly like a pizza oven. After half a dozen trials (including one that stripped the precious seasoning right off my iron skillet) I’ve come up with my own version of the home pizza oven trick. And I’m happy to say that it will turn out an excellent pizza in just a few minutes. And as an extra bonus, you don’t have to spend an hour preheating your pizza stone– just a quick stovetop heating, and you’re in business.

1. Prepare your oven. First, gather up all of your equipment. Once everything is hot, the whole process goes very quickly, so you’ll want to make sure that everything fits and works together first. You’ll need an enameled* cast iron skillet or dutch oven with a 10” diameter, flat base.  You’ll be baking with the pan upside down, adjust the oven rack so that the surface of  your upside-down pot is about three inches away from your broiler. (If you are using a skillet, you’ll need something metal to prop it up– a round cake pan works nicely.) Place an empty baking sheet on the lower rack to catch any drips that get away from your pizza.

2. The bottom heat. The whole reason this technique works is that you can heat cast iron on your stovetop much hotter than a pizza stone in your oven. When you’re ready to cook your pizza, preheat your cast iron skillet or dutch oven over high heat for 7-12 minutes. On my electric stovetop my dutch oven takes 10 minutes to preheat. But that is my stovetop, and my pot– you’ll have to play around and test to figure out the exact timing for your kitchen. Pour a teaspoon of water into the pot and it should dissipate into steam almost immediately. The last drop should be gone within two seconds. Quickly (and carefully) invert your pan, slide your pizza on and bake immediately.

3. The top heat. In my oven, setting the broiler to low will cook a pizza in a little less than 5 minutes. The broiler doesn’t take that long to preheat– but you’ll still want to have some ambient heat in the oven. Seven or eight minutes preheating will likely do the trick. Once again, you’ll have to experiment to figure out what works best in your oven.

4. The optional wood smoke. This part is really, truly optional. It all depends on whether the thought of wisps of wood smoke curling around your baking pizza fills your heart with joy or sends you and your smoke detector into a panic. If you are a wood-smoke fiend like me, then read on. If not, don’t worry, I’m sure your pizza will still be magnificent. Soak a few smoking chips in water an hour or two before you’ll be baking. Wrap the chips loosely in a tin foil packet and poke a half dozen holes in the top of the packet.. In the last two or three minutes of preheating your cast iron, toss your packet of smoking chips into the pot and cover. (This heat will get the smoke started.) Use tongs to transfer the packet of smoking chips to your oven rack when you’re ready to start cooking.

5. Troubleshooting. Balancing this stuff out is mostly common sense– if your pizza is browning too quickly on either the top or the bottom, then you’ll want to reduce the heat from that side (and vice versa if it’s not cooking quickly enough.) While you’re experimenting be sure to take notes– once you figure out how long to preheat and what broiler setting to use, you can whip out a perfect pizza in just a few minutes.

*The whole process will ruin the seasoning on your unfinished cast iron ware. And, yes, enameled cast iron is quite expensive. But if you look around you might be able to find a chipped or damaged pot or skillet for pretty cheap. Chips on the surface of the enamel aren’t great for cooking, but won’t cause any problems for this pizza stone technique.

Fried eggs and wood oven pizza are two of my all-time favorite foods. So when I first tasted a pizza with an egg cooked right on top, I knew it was the start of a love affair. Two perfect (and simple foods) knit together so artfully in the way that makes you think “now why have I never done that?” For my egg pizza, I wanted flavors that would enhance, not compete with the flavor of the egg. I started with a base of garlic and added lightly sauteed chanterelles. The earthy sweet mushrooms and savory garlic infuse into the egg as it cooks giving you a savory white, and (if you cook it just right) a yolk that is still runny enough to ooze all over your plate.

Of course putting an egg on a pizza is not the difficult part of this whole scheme– the hard part is creating a respectable pizza in a home kitchen. Luckily, I have also given this problem some consideration.

Dough:

2¼t. dried yeast (regular, not quick-rising)
2c. warm water
1T. barley malt (substitute honey if you can’t find barley malt)
4c. bread flour
2T. wheat germ
1½t. salt
1T olive oil

Toppings:

½ oz. dried chanterelles
3-5 garlic cloves
eggs
2 c. grated Piave cheese (substitute Parmesan if you can’t find Piave)
1 c. baby arugula
high quality extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Equipment:

enameled cast iron skillet or dutch oven with a 10” flat base
round cake pan, or other metal cookware that the skillet can be inverted onto
parchment paper
smoking chips (optional, I used cherry)
baker’s peel (or an inverted baking sheet will work, too)

Yield:

6 individual pizzas

Mix Dough

Pour yeast into the bottom of your mixer bowl. Pour warm water over the yeast. Stir in malt syrup to dissolve. Pour the flour and wheat germ over the water. Fit the mixer with the dough hook and turn to medium for a minute or two, just until the dough comes together. Turn the speed down to low and let mix for about 10 minutes. By now the dough should be cleaning the side of the bowl. Add the salt and mix for another minute or two until the salt is completely absorbed. Add the olive oil and mix until the oil is incorporated (it might take another minute or two of mixing.) Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise until doubled (about 2½ hours.) If you are using the smoking chips cover them in water and leave them to soak.

Prepare Toppings

Pour hot water over dried mushrooms and leave them to rehydrate. Peel garlic and mince. Lightly saute garlic with a few tablespoons of olive oil until fragrant. Set the garlic and oil aside in a bowl. Slice the chanterelles thinly. Saute the chanterelles in a tablespoon of olive oil. Set chanterelles aside. Grate cheese.

Preshape Dough

Divide dough into six equal portions (about 170g. if you have a food scale). Tuck the ends of each piece of dough under so that each portion is a little round. Set rounds on a well floured surface and leave them to rest for at least 5 minutes.

Prepare Oven

Cut 10” rounds of parchment paper. If you are using a skillet, find a cakepan or something similar (not pyrex, though) to invert your skillet onto so that you’ll end up with a flat surface. Adjust your oven rack so that the surface of the skillet or dutch oven is about three inches away from the burner. Wrap soaked wood chips in tin foil, sealing the edges to make a neat packet. Poke a few holes in the top.

Shape Dough

Press dough into a disc. Tuck your fingers under and transfer the dough on top of your hands. Carefully rock the dough back and forth between your two fists, stretching as you go. Place dough on a parchment round. Lightly flour your fingertips and press the edge of the dough outward until you have a uniform round. If the dough is still too thick at the edges, run your fingers underneath the edge and gently stretch out the edge. The finished dough should come within a half an inch of the edge of the parchment round.

Top & Bake Pizza

Place your skillet on the stove and turn the heat to high and set a timer for 10 minutes. Turn your broiler on to low.  Brush pizza with garlic and olive oil. Scatter cheese and chanterelles over the surface of the pizza. If you are using smoking chips, toss the packet of chips in your preheating pan for the last 2 minutes of preheating. Cover.

Transfer your smoking chips to the oven rack.  Invert your pan and (carefully) move it to the oven. Slide the pizza and parchment onto the surface of the skillet. Close the oven door and let cook for 2½ minutes. Crack an egg into a bowl. At 2½ minutes, pour the cracked egg into the center of the pizza. Cook for another 2½ minutes, or until the crust is blistered, crisp and golden. Scatter arugula leaves over the surface of the pizza. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Eat immediately.

If you are cooking more than one pizza you’ll need to transfer your pot back to the stovetop and bring it up to high heat again before baking the next pizza. It will only take a minute or two to bring it backup to a suitable temperature.

Printer-friendly recipe here.

The Gingerbread Block Project

This year I am orchestrating the creation of a whole New York street scene, built entirely out of gingerbread, icing and magic. The buildings will be baked, constructed and decorated by a group of volunteer (mostly amateur) bakers. The finished block will be displayed at 61 Local Brooklyn in December where anyone can come and check it out in person. At the end of the month, the buildings will be auctioned off, with all proceeds going to benefit City Harvest.

To build a gingerbread project this ambitious, I’m going to need lots of help. Folks who want to help build the gingerbread block can volunteer for a few hours of gingerbread handiwork, and get some first hand gingerbread construction experience while they’re at it. This is not just for pros, everyone can pitch in their special skills (and learn some new ones too.) Volunteers will gather and work together on evenings and weekends to make the gingerbread block come together. The construction will happen over 9 work days, and will take place at 61 Local in Boerum Hill. After the gingerbread creations have been displayed for the public to marvel at, New York gingerbread fans can place a bid on a house and a few lucky bidders will get to take their gingerbread houses home.

Join In!

Want to be a part of the block project? Fantastic! Here are a few ways you can help:

1. Sign up to be a volunteer baker/decorator. All the information about where and when is right here.

2. Take a gingerbread decorating class. Want to make your own gingerbread house?  I’ll be teaching a class or two on gingerbread techniques. A portion of the proceeds from these classes will help offset the material costs of building the gingerbread block.

3. Bid on a finished gingerbread masterpiece! Once we’ve displayed our creations, we’re going to auction them off. If you can make it to Brooklyn to pick up your gingerbread house, you can place a bid! All profits will be donated to City Harvest.

4. Help spread the word to other gingerbread-loving New Yorkers. Tweet, post, link–spread the gingerbread love!

Sign up here if you want updates on how and when you can get involved.

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression– I’m definitely not a master at either homebrewing or printmaking. But, I am pretty darn good at figuring out how to make food and beverages look nice. And after relegating my homebrews to plain brown bottles, (yawn) I decided it was time to figure out how to make a label that was as attractive and carefully crafted as my beer. This is a project that can totally be tackled by a first time printmaker, and still get beautiful results. I might also add that nothing about this technique limits it to beer– I can imagine custom soda labels, wine bottles or even jam jars would have beautiful results.

For those of you who are uninitiated to the hobby/cult of homebrewing, making labels for beer poses a few logistic challenges. First, the ink must not be water soluble.  (At the first drop of condensation on the water soluble inks would turn your label into a bleeding mess.) So absolutely no ink-jet printing, and no water soluble inks. The oil-based inks and relatively ease with which you can make prints led me to block printing.  I’ll be the first to admit that my block printed design is not the easiest solution. (Printing labels with an laser printer definitely seems like the easiest.) But I loved the idea of a handmade label– it seems to suit a handmade beer particularly well. And if you do go to the trouble to cut a block for printing, you can then print your design on all sorts of things– cardboard (for coasters!), fabric (beer-themed canvas bags! T-shirts!)  Best of all, you’ve got the block already made and will be able to quickly churn out new labels the next time you brew a batch of that particular beer. And if you know a home brewer and make them a custom label as a gift… Well, then you’ve made a friend for life.

Materials

Depending on what materials you have on hand, you might not need to buy too may new tools to make a block print. If you haven’t made prints before, there are a few that you’ll need though (namely block printing ink and a brayer). If you’re crafty, you’ve probably already got most of the other materials lying around.

For Carving Your Block:

Block -The material that you carve into is the biggest decision you’ll make. You can use wood, linoleum, little sheets of rubber sold for carving, or even a large rubber eraser.  A harder material (like wood) will last longer. A softer material (like linoleum or rubber) will wear out and get damaged more quickly. The up side is that softer materials are  much easier to carve.  So you could carve a rubber eraser using a razor knife, but you’ll need special tools to carve linoleum and wood.

Carving Tools- Depending on what surface you will be carving, you’ll need to get the appropriate tools. Little sets of carving tools for block printing are available at art stores. Or if you have a dremel (as I do) you can take advantage of electricity. I did my carving for this block exclusively with a dremel fitted with a flex shaft. Using a dremel and a hard block material, it is possible to get pretty precise details. If I were using a softer material, it might be more difficult to get fine details to come through.

Carbon Paper-  You’ll need this to transfer your design to your block. But you can always use a pencil (coupled with some vigorous scribbling action) in a pinch.

Pencils, Pens and Paper

For Printing:

Oil-Based Block Printing Ink- The oil-based ink is the key to making printing work for a beer label. You’ll find it at most art and craft stores.
Brayer- For newcomers, the brayer is the roller thing that looks like a paint roller with a smooth rubber surface. In order to make block printing work, you need to transfer an even surface of ink onto your block. This is precisely what brayers are made for.  It is easiest to apply ink if your brayer is about the same width as the block you will be printing on.
A piece of glass or plastic. Smooth, non-porous surface you don’t mind getting dirty. A small sheet of glass works well. I wrapped a piece of scrap wood in plastic wrap.
Large tablespoon or other smooth surface for putting pressure on the paper
Paper- Whatever you want to print on. I tried out a couple of different colors and combinations for prints. In the end, my favorites were  3 1/2″ by 8″ strips cut from non-glossy magazine pages printed with white ink. I like the layered effect that printing on top of another photo gives. (Also: I feel like a good little recycler, repurposing those old magazines.)
Cooking or baby oil, glass cleaner and lint-free rags . Oil based inks have lots of advantages, but they can also make a mess. I don’t like to use more (toxic) solvents than necessary, so I’ve opted for a cleaning method that requires a little more elbow grease, but still gets the job done.

Glue:

Powdered Milk
Small Paintbrush

Design Your Label

Before designing your label, you’ll need to pick the size and shape of the block you want to create. My design is 3 1/4″ square. I picked a size that I thought looked good on the bottle, and coincidentally, it also turns out to be the perfect size for making a coaster. Your block, design and paper all need to conform to the shape and size that you select.

Now on to the design part: think simple. Is this your first time carving? Think even simpler. I’d start with simple text and play around with shapes, spacing and placement until you’ve got something you like.  If you are drawing by hand, fill in your design in ink to get a good idea of what it will look like. The delicacy of pencil is not going to come through in a block printed design- bold gestures and high contrast are your friends.

Because this beer recipe uses honey, I decided on a bee theme. A hexagon grid was the background, and then I fit in text with the name of the beer in one of the cells. Then I added a few bees (along with their knees), cropped the whole thing down to a square, and presto!

Prepare your carving block.

If you are using rubber or linoleum, all you need to do is cut the block down to the size you want and you’re ready. If you are using wood, you’ll want to sand down the surface until it is very, very smooth. After doing this wood carving (my first!) I have added a second step– paint the surface of the wood white. I found it is helpful when you’re carving to be able to see when you’ve carved through some of the top layer.

Invert And Transfer Your Design

You’ll need to make a mirror image of your label design so that it will print the way that you designed it. If you don’t have carbon paper, you can vigorously scribble in pencil onto the back of your design, then when you trace over it the design will transfer. Place your design where you want it on your block. Cut the carbon paper to fit between the block and the design template. Tape your design template to the block on one side. You want to fix the orientation of the design on the block, but I like to be able to lift it up and make sure that my tracing is transferring well. Last, trace over the design, making sure that you’ve got all the important details. Now remove the design template and fill in all the darkened areas with ink. (This will make it easier to not get confused when you get into carving mode).

Carve Your Block

Now you have one last design decision to make– which parts of your design will be printed with ink, and which will be left blank. Remember, you can use white ink to print, so the light parts don’t have to be the blank ones. Once you decide to carve one color (either the black or the white) away, there is no going back.

Tips and techniques for carving will be very different depending on what material and carving tools you are using. Still I’ve got a few general pointers that I think help in most cases.
1 Go slow. The nice thing about making a block print is that you’ll have that block to reproduce later, but if you rush the carving and make a sloppy pattern, you probably won’t want to.
2. Carve similar shapes one right after the other. Just like anything else, your technique will get better with repetition, and it’s more likely that your results will be consistent throughout the cut.
3. Start with the details first. (I’m sure that some folks disagree with me on this.) I find it easiest to cut all the detailed edges first, then hollow out the middle afterward.
4. Remember that (ultimately) you’re carving will be reduced to just a surface which will either receive ink, or not. This is both good and bad. Good, because you don’t have to worry too much about how pretty the areas you’ve carved away look (it won’t matter to the print). But it can be bad, too, once you’ve carved an area away, there is no going back– sanding and smoothing might make your block look nice, but they won’t necessarily change how the print will come out.

Print

Now it’s time to clean up your block. With linoleum or rubber this is pretty simple. With wood, you’ll want to make sure that you carefully brush all the sawdust out of the carving. I found it helpful to squish a small piece of scrap clay into the block to remove hanging bits of sawdust. Once you start, printing will go pretty quickly, so make sure you have everything you need together before you start: ink, brayer, a non-porous surface to spread your ink on, a spoon (or other smooth object) to help transfer the ink and paper to print on.

Squeeze a small amount of ink out onto your sheet of glass or plastic (think the amount of toothpaste that you use.) Roll the brayer across the ink repeatedly, eventually the ink will start to spread out. Keep rolling, changing the direction every so often until you have the ink spread out thinly and evenly. With a little practice, you’ll notice that the brayer makes a pleasant velcro-like sound when it is rolled over properly spread ink. You’ll probably have to experiment a few times to get the hang of it. I’d err on the side of spreading your ink too thinly– you can always add more, but if you have gloppy ink all over the place, it will be tricky to clean up.

Run your perfectly inked brayer across the surface of your block. You’ll want to run it over your block a few times, and in different directions until you are satisfied that you have an even coating of ink across the surface of your design. Grab the first piece of paper that you want to print on. Pick up the block and place it down on the surface of the paper, wherever you want the print to be. Press the block down firmly. Delicately lift it up– if all goes well the paper will adhere to the ink and you’ll pick them both up together. Flip the block over so that the paper is now facing up. Take your spoon and, gently at first, press the paper down into the block. Increase the pressure gradually and keep working the paper down into the block. Now carefully lift up the paper to reveal your print! Set prints aside to dry, and move on to the next one. Before you know it, you’ll have a good rhythm going and you’ll have made prints on every surface within reach.

Once you’ve made all the prints you’d like to, you’ll need to clean up all of your ink-covered tools. Run the brayer over lots of scrap newspaper to transfer off as much of the ink as you can. Then rub the brayer with a little baby oil, and wipe it clean with a rag.  To clean your glass, scrape away as much ink as possible, then spray with glass cleaner and wipe off the ink residue.

Attach Labels

Once your labels are printed and dried (oh, and the beer is brewed, primed and bottled) you can attach your labels. In a small bowl mix together 1 T. powdered milk with 1 T. water. stir the two together until there are no lumps.  The larger the area that you apply glue to, the firmer the label will be affixed. But applying liquid to a larger area will also make it trickier to keep the paper from buckling and warping.  So you’ve got to figure out a balance for your project. I found applying glue to a half inch strip on either side of the label held them firmly in place, and wasn’t too difficult to apply smoothly.  Carefully smooth the paper over the glass until it adheres (just a few seconds). Now smooth down the rest of the label, wrapping it around the bottle. Paint glue over the other side of the label, and hold that end down across the bottle until it adheres. Voila! To remove the labels, just soak the bottles in water, and the glue will loosen and wash off easily.

Blancmange is kind of a curious recipe to pick for a holiday dessert– but hear me out. After a heavy meal, not everyone wants to shovel down a rich dessert packed with eggs and cream. Blancmange, a cooked custard-like dessert traditionally made with spiced almond milk, seemed like the perfect candidate to get a holiday update. This blancmange is light and delicately spiced, but the spices and earthy sweet potato give it a flavor profile that is unmistakably wintry. Oh, and have I mentioned that it is also both vegan and gluten-free? (Who hasn’t been confronted with the challenge of cooking for a guest with a dietary restriction.) Forgive me for burying the lead. But I definitely think this dessert stands on its own even among voracious dairy and bread eaters (like me). Though blancmange is traditionally made out of almond milk,  in more contemporary recipes, you’ll often see lots of “real” dairy added in to the mix.

Sticking with the traditional nut milk not only makes this dessert lighter, but it’s also a little gift to all of those folks who avoid dairy (and anyone who cooks for them).  My version uses just enough cornstarch to thicken the blancmange to a silky, pudding-like consistency.  Decadent, not-too-filling, and you can totally make these ahead of time–enjoy!

Ingredients:

5 cardamom pods
1 star anise seed (just one of the points of the star, not all five)
1 small cinnamon stick
¼ t. black peppercorns
the zest of an orange
4 c. almond milk
1/3 c. cornstarch
1/3 c. + 2T. light brown sugar
3/4 c. cooked sweet potato
6T. maple syrup
¾ c. pecans
½ t. flaky sea salt

Infuse almond milk:

Crush cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, star anise and black peppercorns in a mortar & pestle or beneath a heavy saucepan. Zest orange. Place spices in a saucepan along with 3 c. of the almond milk. Bring the milk to a boil and immediately remove from the stove. Cover and let the milk sit with the spices for 10 minutes. (The milk will separate– don’t worry it will all come back together in the next step. )

Cook Blancmange:

Whisk together brown sugar and cornstarch. Add the remaining cup of almond milk and whisk to combine. Strain the spices out of the hot almond milk and return to your saucepan. Add the corn starch/sugar/almond milk mixture. Place saucepan over high heat. Whisk constantly as the mixture heats. Bring to a boil, whisking vigorously, and cook at a boil for one minute. Pour the mixture into a bowl, and place it in an ice bath to cool. Stir it every once in a while so that it doesn’t form a skin on top. (Alternately, you can place a sheet of plastic wrap on the surface of the blancmange and refrigerate until it is cool).

Blend:

Pour the cooled blancmange  into a blender and add the sweet potato. Blend on high for one minute, scraping down the sides of the blender if necessary. Carefully pour the mixture into four wine glasses. Chill glasses for at least an hour before serving. After the blancmange has set in the glasses, drizzle a tablespoon of maple syrup on top of each serving. Carefully tilt the glass so that the maple syrup coats the entire surface of the blancmange. This will keep it from getting a skin.

Candy Pecans:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Toss pecans with 2 T. maple syrup. Spread pecans onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake for 5 minutes, remove the pan and stir the pecans so that the bubbling maple syrup evenly coats the pecans. Return the pecans to the oven for 5 more minutes.

Serve:

Serve chilled, topped with candied pecans. Whipped cream makes a lovely accompaniment. You can make the blancmange up to two days in advance. After you coat the surface with maple syrup, wrap the glass in plastic and refrigerate.  Or you can prepare the cooked part of the blancmange, and puree it with the sweet potato just before serving.

Update! I’m entering this recipe in to the North Carolina SweetPotato Commision’s “No More Mallows” blogger recipe contest. Check out other awesome sweet potato recipes at their facebook page.

Printer-friendly recipe here

Remember that time when I spent seven weeks obsessing over the colors of food? Well, this Wednesday (March 7th) I’m teaching a class all about pigments in food. If you’re in New York you can come!  You can sign up at my class listing through skillshare. I will make you tea, talk animatedly about pretty food pictures, and then feed you some gorgeously colorful snacks. It will be a hoot.

As a little teaser for my class (or the Cliff notes version for those of you who can’t make it), I thought I’d share a little infographic I drew up. It’s imperfect. It’s fun. And hopefully, it’s  a little informative, too.

And if you’ve noticed that my posting has been a bit *ahem* on the light side of late. Well, don’t worry. It’s just because I’ve been cooking up a storm for other offline activities. I’ll be back to geeking out on the web before you know it.

I can’t write this post without first making a confession: I have been through both architecture school and pastry school. For a long time I tried to avoid the obvious gingerbread-construction shaped overlap in my fields of study. (I was, I think,  afraid of being pigeon-holed into the crafty side of pastry). Sometimes, the shoe just fits and there is nothing to do but wear it. I have made my peace. And, yes, I have also made gingerbread.

We’ve all seen a million gaudy little gumdrop-studded gingerbread cottages. (Yawn) If I’m going to the trouble of making my own darn gingerbread house, then I’m going to make whatever type I want. So I thought I’d celebrate the house type in my adopted home, Brooklyn. And everyone knows New Yorkers spend a fair amount of their time coveting both real estate and fancy foodstuffs, so the whole thing just seemed to make sense.

My gingerbread house is, admittedly, a little bit on the involved side. So I’ve written instructions that you can use either to recreate my design, or to make your gingerbread creation, whether it is much simpler, or even more involved. As the scope of this post was reaching epic proportions, I decided to divide it into two separate sections. Keep reading right here to get the full story of how the house is made and put together. To get my recipes for gingerbread dough, royal icing and poured sugar, head over to my post on gingerbread house basics.

Enjoy, and have a very happy holidays!

Design Your House

At the risk of sounding obvious, the design of your gingerbread house might be the most important step. Sure, a handy decorator can turn a plain design into something lovely, but if you have an interesting design to start with (and one that is easy to put together) then you’re already halfway to having a beautiful gingerbread house. I’m attaching templates for my design right here, so if you want to build this exact design, you can skip all the design stuff and go to the next step.

What size will it be? One of the biggest decisions you’ll need to make is what size your house will be. The bigger the house gets, the trickier the construction is. I decided to make my design small enough that I could print out all the templates on a standard 8½ x 11 sheet of paper. For this size house, 3/16” thick gingerbread works quite well. But if you scaled up the design to make a 2 foot tall house, you’d need to use a thicker gingerbread (at least ¼”, maybe een ⅜”). Likewise, if you made a much smaller gingerbread house, you could make do with a thinner dough. I’d say a house smaller than 9” high, ⅛” thick gingerbread would be fine. But the thickness is not the only tricky thing about making a big gingerbread house. It will also be more challenging to glue the pieces into place securely without breaking your giant pieces of gingerbread.

Draw a template for each gingerbread piece. I’ve posted my design template, in case anyone wants to use it to make their own brownstone. But you can use the same techniques and recipes to make your own design– whether it is simpler or more complicated. If you are comfortable with designing and building stuff, and adjusting for the thickness of your gingerbread seems obvious, then go ahead and draw up a design straight from your imagination. If you’re not quite so confident, I’d recommend building a dummy house out of cardboard. Most corrugated cardboard is about the right thickness, and it will be much easier for you to make adjustments (and catch any mistakes) in a cardboard model. Whether you build a dummy model first or not, you’ll want to have a paper or cardboard template for each piece of gingerbread in your house.

I have one interior support piece in my design. This piece helps hold up the first wall and helps hold the roof up while the project is under construction. I also clipped a strand of led Christmas lights to this support, to have interior lighting. If you are making your own design, consider adding an interior support, or even more than one, depending on the shape of your house.

Don’t forget a base! I used a scrap piece of wood for a base to my gingerbread house. You can build one out of gingerbread, but I prefer having a stronger piece of material holding up all my hard work.

Add relief. It is possible to bake gingerbread on surfaces that are not entirely flat (like the rounded projection of bay windows on my house). To get this effect, you’ll need to find (or build) something in the right shape to give the gingerbread depth. And then you’ll need to cover that thing in parchment paper so that it doesn’t stick while baking.  I made a support for the bay window projection with a double thick piece of brown paper stapled and folded into the right shape and then sheathed in parchment paper. (The pattern for the support is in the pdf of my design as well). If you’re making your own design, you can obviously make your own supports. I would strongly suggest sticking to pretty basic shapes. Removing just the simple rounded paper template was a delicate operation, and more complicated shapes would be even trickier.

Carve Templates

I knew that for my brownstone, I’d want to add a stone patterned texture. In previous years, I have used a butter knife to make an impression and draw in the lines of stones. As you’d expect, this can get a little tedious. So this year I decided to try a different technique– carving a template out of wood, and then pressing the gingerbread into the mold. Sure, carving takes a little longer than forming the gingerbread. BUT, if you carve a design that you can repeat (such as the frieze pieces on the projecting bay windows) you can save yourself lots of time and produce multiple textured pieces. You certainly don’t have to carve anything to make a beautiful gingerbread house. I have made many houses, and this is the first one that I used carving as a technique. But if you happen to be one of those folks who likes carving (or if you know someone who is) then making your own templates can take your gingerbread sculpting to another level.

For this house, I made three carved templates: a simple carved cornice, a decorated frieze, and a dowel carved to make a stone pattern when it is rolled. If you chose to make a carved design, make sure that the design has a deep enough relief– anything less than 1/16” will likely disappear during baking.

Make Base Recipes (Gingerbread Dough & Royal Icing)

Now you’ve made your design, and maybe even a few textured molds. Time to get your hands dirty! I have a whole separate post with the base recipes for gingerbread dough, royal icing and poured sugar (that’s what the glass windows in my house are made of). These recipes make plenty of gingerbread and icing to create my brownstone design. You could halve these recipes, if you’re making a smaller house. Mix your big batches of gingerbread dough and royal icing first, and then you’ll be all set when it comes time to assemble and decorate your house.  If you decide to use poured sugar, wait until you’re ready to assemble the house to cook it. Then you can use it, not just as glass for the windows, but as glue to hold the walls up.

Cut & Shape Gingerbread

Roll your gingerbread out to the specified thickness on a piece of parchment paper. My pattern uses 3/16” thickness for the walls, and ⅛” thickness for the stairs. Carefully cut all the pieces, leaving them on the parchment paper. If you are rolling a pattern onto your dough (like my stone pattern) first roll the pattern into the dough then cut the pieces out. You can re-roll scraps and trimmings right away, just be sure to wrap them up so they don’t dry out.  Attach any sculpted or decorative pieces of gingerbread by first brushing on a little water. Once your gingerbread pieces are all cut out and textured the way you’d like them, leave them out overnight to dry.

Pipe Freestanding Royal Icing Pieces

My design for the fire escape uses royal icing not just as a surface decoration, but as its own structure. This technique works well for railings and other delicate pieces. Pipe the pieces out onto a piece of parchment and leave them to dry overnight before touching them.

Bake Gingerbread

Again, I have more detailed instructions for baking gingerbread at my post on gingerbread house basics. You want to bake the gingerbread for a long time (1 hour+) at a very low temperature.

Decorate Building Sides & Assemble Stairs

It is much easier to pipe onto flat gingerbread pieces than onto an already assembled house. So if you have any intricate designs you’ll be adding to the side of your house, think about piping them before the house is assembled. I mixed up some royal icing so that it is the same color as the gingerbread (colored with cocoa powder and cinnamon) and piped window frames, all before any of the gingerbread pieces were put together.

To build the fire escape, use royal icing to attach the bottoms and sides of each level to the building side, just below the middle set of windows. Let these pieces set up for a while. Finally, attach the big front piece of the fire escape to the side supports. I’ll be honest– mine cracked, but I was able to put the pieces together neatly enough that it didn’t matter.  Let this piece dry overnight before you try to turn the wall upright.

Even though you’re not ready to put the main walls up, you can still assemble any smaller freestanding structures (like the stairs). Because the stair pieces are so small, I don’t recommend using poured sugar as glue to construct the staircase. Start by gluing a few stairs to the center support, and then tacking that to one of the side supports. Continue working your way down the stairs until you’ve rounded the corner and attached all the side pieces. Stairs are a bit tricky and fussy to assemble, but if you take the time to make them look nice, they really add a lot to the house. Just be patient, and if the whole stair starts to wobble and seem out of control, take a break and let the icing set up.

Cook Poured Sugar & Cut Windows (Optional)

Now the sides are decorated, and your house is ready to assemble! If you are using poured sugar, either for windows or for glue, you’ll be working with the sugar and house assembly at the same time. First pour the windows and cut them into the proper shape. Then you can use the leftover sugar as glue.

Assemble the House

Trim the building front so that it lays flat against the base. Mark on the base where you want the building to be located. Apply glue to the bottom of the building front, and to two sides of the building support. (Either royal icing or cooked sugar.) Glue the support in place (on my design it is right between the door and the bay window). If you are adding poured sugar windows, then attach them to the back of the window holes.

Now on to the second wall. Add glue to the bottom and side of the second wall, and glue it in place. If you are making interior lights, attach the light fixture now. Turn it on to make sure that the light will reach the windows you want it to shine out of. Next glue the roof in place, making sure to add glue to the top of the wall support. Continue adding walls, gluing and trimming them as necessary. If your house starts to feel wobbly, then leave it for a few hours. Don’t try to add pieces to an unstable structure– no good will come of it.

Decorate

Now that the building is all together, it’s time to add final decorations. With a little royal icing to hold them in place, you can add all manner of confections for decoration. I chose a muted, more or less realistic palate– adding royal icing snow and just a few decorations. Don’t be afraid to think beyond the usual gumdrops and candy canes either–  I used fresh thyme to make garlands, and studded them with whole pink peppercorns. All sorts of pretty dried fruits, nuts, herbs and spices can make lovely gingerbread ornaments. Now you can light up your gingerbread house and show it off. If you’ve used poured sugar windows, try to keep it in a dry place (not a steamy kitchen) so that your windows won’t melt.

Admittedly my gingerbread house is a bit… involved. (I think it was around four evenings to make everything and put it together). But apart from the garlands (made of thyme and pink peppercorns) I used just three base recipes: gingerbread, royal icing and poured sugar. Gingerbread and royal icing are inescapable,  the poured sugar is used for amber colored “glass” in the windows. Totally an optional addition. (But it looks really good if you plan to put a light in your gingerbread house.)

The gingerbread recipe I made is technically edible, but it really is not meant for eating. Which explains why I call for shortening (I just can’t stand to put perfectly good butter into something that isn’t going to be eaten). The ideal gingerbread for making a house bakes up hard as a rock. The texture and flavor are rather similar to a thin plywood. I make gingerbread cookies for eating with good butter, and a delicate balance of spices. This dough was a good opportunity to get rid of some old, stale cinnamon. Royal icing is made of just egg whites and powdered sugar. It sounds easy enough, but there are a few particularities that you’ll want to be aware of before you get going. With these two recipes, you’ll be ready tackle just about any gingerbread project.

Gingerbread Construction Tools:

You can make a great gingerbread house in a fairly standard kitchen. You’ll probably want to have these tools nearby.

parchment paper (lots of it)
bread knife (for trimming cooked gingerbread)
silpat (optional, but preferred for pouring sugar)
rolling pin
dremel & scrap wood (optional, but awesome for carving intricate templates)
strips of wood that are precisely 3/16” thick
razor knife or sharp paring knife
Pastry bag and tips (optional)

Gingerbread Dough For Construction

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup shortening
1 1/2c. sugar
2 T cinnamon
1 t. ground nutmeg
9 cups flour
½ c. corn starch
2 cups dark corn syrup or molasses
¼ c. water

Make Gingerbread Dough

In a large mixer bowl, cream the shortening together with the sugar and spices. Scrape down the sides of the bowl until the shortening mixture is completely homogeneous.  Add the flour a few cups at a time, mixing after each addition. (If you are using an electric mixer use the slowest speed)  Eventually the shortening will mix completely into the flour and it will resemble just-barely-damp sand. Pour in the molasses and water and mix until the liquid is distributed throughout the dough. The dough is very stiff, so you’ll need to knead it just to get the whole mass to come together. Turn the dough out onto a counter top and divide it into three parts. One by one knead each portion of dough until it is smooth and homogeneous. Press the dough into 1” thick rectangles and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Let rest an hour or so before you roll it (just leaving it out at room temperature is fine). If you won’t be using it that day, store the dough in the refrigerator, but bring it up to room temperature before you roll and shape it.

Roll & Shape Gingerbread

It is always a challenge to roll your gingerbread uniformly, but an even thickness makes your house much easier to assemble. I glued a few strips of balsa wood together to make guides for rolling the gingerbread dough. This way I knew that all of my gingerbread pieces were rolled to exactly 3/16” thick. (See the section on designing a gingerbread house for more information on thickness). Take a few minutes and make (or just buy) guides for rolling your dough. Trust me, it will be much easier to roll your gingerbread, and you’ll get a better end result.   And most importantly, you won’t have any thin, weak spots liable to break during assembly.

Once the gingerbread is rolled out, you can use a number of techniques to give your gingerbread pieces some texture. You can roll them into a mold (like I did with the decorated friezes on the front of the house). Or you can use a butter knife or stamps to press a design into the surface. Remember that the gingerbread will puff up when it bakes, so don’t make your designs too subtle. It’s better to make them a little too deep than too shallow.

You can also sculpt little pieces of gingerbread and add them to a flat piece of dough to make a pattern. (See the pilasters on the front of the brownstone. Brush a little water on the surface where you want to attach a decorative piece, and use it to stick the pieces together. You don’t want to let your designs get too thick, though. Thicker pieces take longer to bake and are more likely to deform. Stick to mostly thin designs– a half inch would be the absolute thickest that I’d try to bake.

Bake Gingerbread

Just about everything deforms when you bake it. After all the work cutting pieces and impressing designs in them, we want to try to minimize the puffy swelling that happens in the oven.  First, I specify letting your cut & molded gingerbread pieces dry overnight. This helps set the surface texture up, so that we’ll see more of it after baking. Then when the pieces actually go in the oven, you’ll want to cook them at a very low heat (I used 250°F) with the oven door propped open with a wooden spoon. All this results in drying the gingerbread and cooking it very slowly. It will likely take an hour until your gingerbread is done (maybe longer depending on altitude, moisture, thickness…) Just keep checking it every 15 minutes or so, and eventually you will see it turn a slightly darker shade of brown. If you touch the surface of a piece, it will feel mostly firm, and your fingers will not easily leave an indentation.  Try to group your gingerbread pieces with other pieces that are a similar size. Smaller and thinner pieces will bake more quickly, and it will be easier to remove a whole sheet of small pieces together. Let all gingerbread pieces cool completely before assembling.

Trimming Gingerbread

In spite of all the efforts, the gingerbread pieces will still deform a bit during baking. You can either use royal icing to fill in the gaps, or you can very, very carefully trim the gingerbread pieces back to straight lines and perfect right angles. The risk with trimming is that you could break your gingerbread piece. On the other hand, trying to piece together distorted pieces can require using a lot of royal icing, and this will make your connections not look as tidy. You’ve got to make the call.  This gingerbread recipe cuts very well when the pieces are at least 3/16” thick. Thinner, more delicate pieces are prone to shattering.

To trim the gingerbread, start with a serrated bread knife and gradually shave away at the excess until you have the shape you want. Once you have a few pieces assembled, you’ll want to trim your pieces to fit together with the other (imperfect) pieces. So test each piece before assembly and trim as necessary.

Royal Icing

Ingredients:

6 egg whites
9 c. powdered sugar

Make Royal Icing

Pour egg whites into a large mixer bowl. If you are using a stand mixer, fit it with the paddle attachment.  Sift powdered sugar. (You can skip this step if you are using a stand mixer. ) Add 2 c. of the powdered sugar to the egg whites. Mix. Keep adding powdered sugar a cup at a time, mixing until the icing is smooth after each addition. Once you add the final powdered sugar addition, the mixture should be thick, almost like a buttercream. If you are using a stand mixer, turn the speed up to medium and beat for a few minutes. This will beat out any remaining little chunks of powdered sugar that could trip you up later on. If you are not planning to use the icing right away, transfer it immediately to a plastic container and cover. The surface of the icing dries out very quickly, so always plan to keep it covered. I know it has egg whites, but it is fine to keep this icing out at room temperature. The sugar concentration is so high, that it is not at risk for harboring nasty little microbes.

You can also color royal icing. I added a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and a little cinnamon to make a my icing roughly the same shade as my baked gingerbread. Of course you can use food coloring to color royal icing too. Just make sure that you don’t add so much that the consistency of the royal icing becomes runny.

Adjusting the Consistency

To minimize frustration and gingerbread induced despair, it is essential that your icing be at the proper consistency. If it is too stiff, it won’t stick and will be impossibly hard to pipe. If it is too runny, it will run right off the gingerbread or turn your intricate designs into a puddle.  Too stiff and you can add a few drops of water, to runny and you can add powdered sugar. I prefer to make a big batch of royal icing, (as my recipe indicates) and make sure that it’s on the stiff side. It’s much easier to add a few drops of water and loosen things up than to add more powdered sugar (it takes a surprising quantity of powdered sugar to stiffen things up). At the right texture, the surface of the icing will look shiny, but it will still hold its shape when you grab a spoonful. You’ll want to use

either a cornet or a piping bag to get your icing where you want it. Cornets work best for small quantities of royal icing– for this gingerbread house I only used cornets.

Making Cornets

1. Cut paper: Roll out and cut a section of parchment paper that is about square, or just slightly rectangular, with the width of the roll being the longer side. Cut the rectangle along the diagonal.

2. Roll into a cone: Roll the triangle into a cone, with the tip of the cone at the center of the longest side. There are three corners that you want to align: the bottom, the middle corner and the top. Line up these three layers, and your cornet will have the right proportions.

3. Tighten: Tighten the cone by pulling down on the outermost layer of paper while pushing up on the innermost layer with your thumb. The tip of the cone should close completely.

4. Lock: Fold over the flaps of the cone to lock the cornet together. I like to pinch a little vertical fold along the locked overlap on the base of the cornet (where you have the most layers of overlapping paper). This helps keep the slippery parchment paper from slipping and becoming loose.  Make a few cornets at a time and have them ready to go before you start. For this project, you’ll want to have at least three or four ready to go once you start assembling and decorating your house.

Filling Cornets

Place a cornet tip down into a narrow-mouthed  jar. Use a spatula to carefully scoop and a few tablespoons of icing into your cornet– try to avoid getting any icing on the top 2 “ of the cornet. (If you pour straight from the bowl you’re much more likely to make a mess.) Do not overfill- it might seem like it will save you time, but your icing will start to ooze out the back of the cornet later. Pick up the cornet and hold it with the seam facing you. Gently squeeze the icing down toward the base of the cornet. Try to get all of the icing out of the top two inches of the cornet. Fold over the ends of the cornet away from you. Then begin rolling the end of the cornet away from you, like you would a toothpaste tube. Snip the tip off your cornet and start squeezing from the end. Try to cut an even tip- no diagonals or wonky edges. When you are piping with the cornet, keep using the same toothpaste tube rolling motion to squeeze the icing out. (Ignore the fact that the photos show filling the cornet with chocolate… the technique is identical no matter what you are filling it with.)

Royal Icing For Structural Connections.

When it is completely dry, royal icing is quite firm. Hard enough to hold up a big gingerbread house. But, the icing has to be completely dry for it to be strong.  And disturbing it while it dries can ruin the hold and even collapse a gingerbread house.  The thicker the icing is applied, the more weight it will hold. But the thicker the icing is applied, the longer it will take to dry. Royal icing connections work best when the joint is well coated with royal icing– a smear of icing between two gingerbread pieces will not hold any weight. . If you want a neat looking connection on the front of your building, I suggest loading the back of the connection with a thick bead of royal icing. My summation: use enough icing, and let it dry completely without disturbing it. Sometimes this means gluing a few pieces together, and then leaving them for a while. Gingerbread building is an exercise in patience.

Royal Icing For Decoration

You can make a stunning gingerbread house using just royal icing decorations. Traditional decorations are piped directly onto the gingerbread pieces. But if you’re feeling ambitious, you can also pipe freestanding pieces onto a piece of parchment paper, then (when they are completely dry) you can carefully peel them off. I used this technique to make the fire escape and the bicycle.  Remember that the thinner your piping the more fragile your finished pieces will be, so larger pieces will need to be thicker to stay in one piece.

Poured Sugar

Ingredients:

1 c. sugar
½ c. water
1 T white vinegar

Safety First

Cooking sugar is not difficult, but it can be dangerous. Boiled sugar reaches much higher temperatures than boiling water, so little spatters of this stuff can really burn. If you do happen to get a spatter on you (don’t!) do not rip it off, immediately run the area under cold water, then once it has cooled, remove the sugar. A clean, uncluttered work space is also essential to safely work with this hot, sticky stuff.

Cooking Poured Sugar

Once the cooked sugar is ready to pour, it needs to be used immediately, so before you cook your sugar, prepare the surface where you will pour your sugar. I like to pour the sugar on to a silpat, directly on a countertop. (You can also use parchment paper) Make sure that your silpat/parchment paper is completely clean of specks and oil– if you’re in doubt rub it clean with a little white vinegar. If you are worried about the heat coming in to contact with your counter, use a cutting board or pizza stone as a base surface.  (Metal sheet pans will buckle with the heat, I don’t recommend them.)

Place sugar in a saucepan. Pour the water around the edge of the pan to wash any rogue sugar crystals into the center of the pan. Draw a clean finger through the center of the sugar pile to moisten any dry sugar in the center of the pan. Cover and place the saucepan over high heat. Grab a bowl and a pastry brush. Fill the bowl with cool water. Once the sugar mixture has come to a boil, remove the lid. Keep an eye on the sugar as it cooks. If necessary, use your pastry brush to clean any sugar buildup off of the sides of the pan. Take the damp brush and squeeze a little water onto the side of the pan directly above the sugary area. As the water drizzles down, it will dissolve the sugary gunk. It is important to dissolve sugar buildup or crystals, otherwise the sugar might crystalize.  But you don’t want to be overzealous with the pastry brush, adding water cools off and dilutes your sugar, which will make it take longer to cook. So use your water and brush judiciously.

Let the sugar boil. Do not stir. (I know you want to stir it– don’t! ) The sugar will boil very rapidly as it heats up. If you want the “glass” to be clear, cook the sugar to 320°F. If you’d like it to be golden (like mine) cook the sugar until it just barely starts to color. (You don’t need to use a candy thermometer for this option– once the sugar has started to caramelize, it is hot enough). Remove the pan from the heat and gently swirl the sugar mixture to even out the coloring. Hold the pan off the heat for a minute or so until the mixture cools to the consistency of honey.

Poured Sugar Windows

Start pouring slowly, the mixture will cool quickly once it is out of the pan. Keep pouring in the center of the sugar mixture, the cooler, firmer sugar at the edges will form something of a dam, so that the sugar you are pouring won’t run all over your counter. Pour the sugar out into the desired shape and thickness. As the sugar cools on the counter, use a butter knife to test and see if you can cut the sugar without it sticking. Once the sugar is cool enough, cut/shape it into the desired shapes. Let the sugar pieces cool completely, then snap them apart. If you have failed pieces, keep them clean and free of other crumbs. Then you can throw these cooked sugar scraps back into your saucepan and re-melt them. If you are using the caramel as a coloring (like I did) each time you remelt the sugar, it will get a little darker. I didn’t mind the slight variation in color, but it is something to keep in mind.

Poured Sugar Glue

You can also use hot poured sugar as glue to almost instantly set up the sides of the building. First pour the windows that you will need, then carefully dip the edge of the gingerbread piece in the hot “glue”. Immediately transfer it to where you need to attach it. Hold in place for about 30 seconds or until the sugar sets up. Once your glue cools down too much, it will be useless for sticking things together. If it starts leaving strands of sugar trailing behind, it is too cool.  Just heat the pan up enough to bring the sugar back to a honey-like consistency. Again, don’t stir! Just tilt and swirl the pan to mix the sugar.

Using cooked sugar, it is much easier to get the building together in the first place, but it does have some disadvantages. Cooked sugar is very susceptible  to damage from moisture– even just moisture in the air. So a poured sugar creation that looks pristine one day, might melt the next day into a sticky mess. And if that mess is the glue holding your house together… well, you see the problem. I like to use poured sugar as glue to initially get things together. And then (afterward) go back over the seam with a thick bead of royal icing. The royal icing will set up over time, and hopefully do the job even if the poured sugar should start to melt.

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