Gingerbread. And gingerbread houses

My mother loves ginger. I’m rather lukewarm about it. I’m more appreciative these days but for years I was no fan.

For my mom, candied ginger, this ginger, that ginger – everything goes… If a recipe calls for ginger she’ll add twice what is called for.

She has been making gingerbread from the same recipe, year after year. I’m not sure where the actual recipe is from, but given that we have made about a zillion batches of gingerbread, I’m going to say it’s an old family recipe.

And it is great. Best gingerbread on the planet if I do say so, myself. Or if I say so for her benefit. Every other time I have had gingerbread it has lacked something. No idea what, but it doesn’t matter. Mom’s gingerbread rocks and however she does it – the ginger is exactly the right amount.

There is more, though. Her gingerbread is structural as long as you cook it long enough for it to get a bit crunchy. It holds together in house-form perfectly.

So that said, about 20 years ago mom started doing gingerbread houses for her kids (us) and our cousins. I always thought that everyone did gingerbread houses like ours – you know, built like a bunker and perfect for decorating with zillions of candies. Then, once the candies had all been pried off, the gingerbread was there for the eating. It does get a bit stale but every year there doesn’t seem to be much left no matter how dry the air in the house might be.

This year she decided that this year would be her last year to build the houses. I don’t blame her, as it’s a lot of work. She did, however, go out in style, making 11 houses for all the young relatives. Quite the swan song.

Now, I would be remiss in not mentioning that the gingerbread house creative process is a team effort. My mom makes the dough and crafts the pieces for the houses; my dad takes care of quality control in the form of sampling the off-cuts and he is in charge of trimming the slabs and gluing the houses together.

He uses melted sugar. It hardens like hard candy and it’ll hold slabs of gingerbread in perfect harmony even with a couple pounds of gummy bears and icing. What is more, it’ll stand for days on end. The only drawback is that things get a bit sticky when you’re demolishing the house, but that sort of goes with the territory.

They have a system set up, honed from years of practice. How long to bake the gingerbread slabs; how to fix any breaks; how to trim to size; how to assemble properly and not burn yourself… It’s a rather impressive process.

Now we just have to get them to write it down so we don’t lose the technique. It’s golden. Best gingerbread and best gingerbread houses around made with love from a great team.