Gingerbread Tardis

This week I was inspired and in the holiday spirit. I wanted to do a fun and geeky gingerbread thing. Last year I tried to do a Ninjabread Dojo which didn't turn out quite as I had imagined but this year it was gonna be perfect. I went to school, I knew the tricks, I was gonna make a Gingerbread Tardis!!! I pulled up some pictures for inspiration

 Then I started my planning faze where I sketched all the pieces I was gonna need and found my gingerbread recipe here (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gingerbread-house-recipe.html) But I decided I wanted my Tardis to be blue so I exchanged the brown sugar for regular sugar and the molasses for light corn syrup. I kept the spices though because I didn't feel it was truly gingerbread if it didn't have any ginger. I also figured that based on the size of their gingerbread house vs. mine that I was going to need about four times as much dough. My final recipe looked like this:
     2c Butter
     2c Sugar                       Cream butter and sugar together
     1c Corn Syrup              Add corn syrup, spices, and baking soda
     4t Cinnamon                Blend alternating flour and water
     4t Ginger                      Chill at least 30min
     2t Cloves
     4t Baking Soda             Bake at 350 degrees for 15(ish) min
     8c All Purpose Flour
     6-8T Water
Next I cut out my pattern pieces. I cut them out of some heavy craft paper I had laying around but as you can see it gets kind of greasy from the cookie dough.

I made my cookie dough and let it sit in the fridge overnight.

The next day I floured my counter tops and rolled out my dough. I used the handy-dandy rolling pin even dough rubber rings mother got for me, which worked out well in this case since the width of my rolling pin was about the size of my pans.

I happened to read an article about Martha Stewart making a gingerbread Downton Abbey and she recommended rolling out your dough straight onto rimless cookie sheets. Well I don't have rimless cookie sheets but I thought it was a good idea so I carefully moved my rolled out dough onto my cookie sheets. I do this a lot with fondant but this stuff gets really tearable when it's warm.
Then I cut out my pieces using a craft knife and patience.

I put the pans in the freezer for about 15mins before putting them in the oven.
When I pulled them out they had spread somewhat and browned a little at the edges.

While the cookies were still hot I used a sharp knife and re-cut the cookies using the patten pieces again.

When everything was cool I wrapped it all in plastic wrap.
A couple days later I unwrapped everything and started assembly. I made some royal icing (which is basically egg whites and powdered sugar) for my glue. I started by coating my window backer pieces since they were supposed to be white but I dyed all the dough blue.





Then I put all the wall pieces together and let them dry.

I glued the base onto a cardboard round and started gluing and tipping the walls up.

Once all my wall and door pieces were in place I realized that my top plate was too small and I had to quickly bake a new one. While that baked I glued on my corner strips. Then when it was cooled I glued the three top plates and the roof bits, using a small lid I found to prop it up while it dried.












Next I dyed some of my dough black and baked pieces for the 'police box' signs which I realize I didn't design a space for...hindsight. Also built the top light out of some raw dough since I didn't have any fondant or gumpaste to use...too afraid to bake it so I left it raw. The rest is just fun piping and time...

A New Year a New Hobby

It's Christmas time and for the first year I'm not with my family doing Messiah singalongs and playing in the snow. Since there's no snow here...at all (it's actually a drizzly, rainy day) and I've missed the singalong I thought I'd start a new tradition. As many of you know I'm a baker and many of my crafts are edible, though you wont be able to eat them (because they ship terribly badly exhibit A----->).

So I thought I'd start a blog documenting my fun craft projects through the year. This also ties into my new years resolution/year 1 goal to do a fun craft a week(-ish). Last week I made fun pinatas for some of you and this week I'm making a gingerbread Tardis and I hope to continue the trend though I know some of my projects may turn out badly and I can't promise those will make it up here. Some of my crafts will be silly and done in an hour, some may take more then one week to complete, but I want to do more of the fun ideas I come up with and I want to share them with my equally crafty friends and family. As with my Paris blog I will try to take pictures and post them.