Gingerbread Tardis

I missed posting about this years gingerbread house! As per usual I made another amazing gingerbread creation this year but I scaled down from last year and technically I recycled an old gingerbread house from 2014 but I had to make a whole new pattern for it. So take 2 on the gingerbread Tardis, it went better than the first time, turned out cleaner, pattern still needs some adjustments but I like it.

I started by making a plan, using my old pattern I determined all the pieces I would need to construct my tardis. Three walls, 2 doors, a base, corner strips, and outer panel pieces to complete the look. The changes I made from last time include making everything bigger and doing 2 thick pieces on top instead of  4 triangular topper pieces, lastly I had to correct a major error from my last pattern and make sure I had top strips my “Police Box” banners could hang on without interfering with the doors. The next step is making a card stock paper pattern. Now I’ve learned from the past to coat my pieces in a plastic cover but unfortunately I’ve been too busy opening my own business this year and didn’t have time to coat these pieces. As you can probably tell that lead to them getting a bit greasy.

Some other changes I made were cutting out the side panels and corner strips from fondant instead of cookie dough. I did this as a last minute change but the thought process behind it was that the fondant doesn’t expand or change shape due to baking and I figured it would give me cleaner lines. I also made the “Police Box” strips and phone door out of fondant. The structural pieces were all made out of a dyed sugar cookie dough with no baking soda and lots of extra flour. Last time I made my tardis out of a proper gingerbread dough with all the spices but it turned green when it baked and left me with an aqua colored tardis, not good. I also chose to hot melt glue my structure together rather than use royal icing because it dries faster and it was for display only. I did use royal icing to attach all the exterior pieces  which was my next step. You’ll notice that my last minute decision to change the exterior to fondant pieces has made my whole design not quite fit so it will need more reworking at some point. The panel pieces are all one so I used card stock to lift them into place after applying the royal over the window areas and down the sides and middle.

I made the fondant pieces (and baked the cookie pieces) a day ahead of assembly so they would have time to dry. In addition to the side panels and “Police Box” banners I also made a topper light and a phone door. One of these days I’ll actually make the top light up but it was not this time.







My last step was to add fun holiday decorations. The snow is all buttercream and the icicles are royal icing. I used a clay exctruder to make a perfectly even light string attaching it with royal and the lights themselves are chocolate sixlet candies attached with black royal icing. I added icicles to the light strings to add some realism and depth and covered the whole thing in a think coating of powdered sugar. There it is, my second attempt at a gingerbread tardis.