So, here’s where things were left off yesterday.
Man, gingerbread houses can look like such a mess before they’re completed. I admittedly got super heavy handed with the royal icing on the inside; I plan on packing this thing up and storing it, so it needs to be basically indestructible. My Bob’s Burgers house was done this way and survived an 8 lb cat jumping on the roof, so I’m confident it’ll work out.
My next job was to work on the doors and windows. I did these by using edible markers on wafer paper. You’ll see the wafers I used are much bigger than the final door size, since they needed space around the edges to be adhered to the wall. Since I intend to put a light into this gingerbread house, I wanted only the “window” bits of the wafer doors to be translucent. To achieve this, I covered the backs in chocolate in a way that only covered the non-window parts.
Once that was done, I popped on the roof pieces and began covering them with shingles. I put down a base layer of fondant first, which I then textured a bit with a knife. Then I cut out dozens and dozens of randomly sized square shingles and randomly adhered them. The Mystery Shack’s roof is really, really messed up. It looks a bit wet in the picture below because I just brushed the whole thing with vodka to remove excess cornstarch and make shingles stick, but it’ll be dry in later photos.
As you can see, I also covered the porch and steps and painted on a wood grain pattern. Next up, the first signs! I made these ahead of time out of pastillage and colored them with edible markers. Everything’s glued on with chocolate, basically. Next, I brushed the steps with cocoa powder to make them matte and less yellow-y in color.
At this point I made the tin roofing out of gumpaste so it would have time to dry. I did this by weaving toothpicks over and under a strip of gumpaste.
Finally, I made the big signs! Sorry for not taking more photos, but essentially these are fondant-covered gingerbread slabs that I painted with gel food coloring. Once again, I adhered the whole thing with chocolate. Finally, I used royal icing to add moss. I did that by putting down wet royal icing and sprinkling it with dried, crushed royal icing of the same color. I slathered a thin layer of the royal onto some parchment last night for that purpose.
Mystery Shack… Mosstery Shack!
And that’s it for today. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS IT LOOKS LIKE THE MYSTERY SHACK! And not just because it has a huge sign that says “Mystery Shack!”
Tomorrow I’ll be putting down the dirt and grass and adding details. The next post will be for a completed Shack!
It’s finally coming together, so I’m as excited as Mabel on Smile Dip.
