Sunday, April 24, 2011

Easter House!

It is Easter.  Christ is risen!  The sadness of Good Friday is all but forgotten in the glorious joyousness of Easter morning.  I like Easter a whole lot.  I may or may not have been awake in the wee hours of this morning because I was so excited.  Just maybe.
At Christmas last, I wrote a post called "The Christmas Cross" where I talked about how Christmas would be meaningless if it weren't for Easter and how we wouldn't have Easter without Christmas.  At Christmas G-d gave us Jesus who grew up and died on the cross so that we could be set free from all the evil powers and our own sinfulness. I am more of an Easter person than a Christmas person. I like Christmas and all, but I could tell you quicker how many days are left until Easter (349, just in case you were wondering) than I could how many were left for Christmas (I actually have no idea).
At Christmas I enjoyed mixing traditions a little bit and making chocolate bunnies. I decided to continue in my pattern of mixing traditions, since the two holidays really do go hand in hand,  and made a my very first ever Gingerbread house.  After making it I realized why I never had a gingerbread house growing up.  There is just so much wrong (allergywise) with gingerbread houses.  For starters, gingerbread itself is a challenge.  But I conquered it a couple months ago.  Second, Royal Icing (the "glue" that holds a gingerbread house together) is typically made with egg whites.  I googled vegan royal icing recipes and found that they all had corn syrup in them.  Corn syrup is an issue.  So I googled alternatives to corn syrup and found one that I could make.  Then I could finally make Royal Icing.  Royal Icing also has powdered sugar (icing sugar, confectioner's sugar) in it, which is made with corn starch.  My mommy is amazing though and makes me corn-free powdered sugar.  She's just that great. The third major problem with gingerbread houses, especially here in the US, is the decorating candy.  Americans have this strange fascination with corn syrup.  It's in everything.  Thankfully I had thought far enough ahead and had Mommy bring decorating candy with her last time she came for a visit.
Here is some pictures of the process.  Pictures of the finished product will be in a different post:
Gingerbread cooling 
A nice green foundation 
lots of colors! 
Candy all set out.  Most of it is free from artificial flavors and colors...but the icing definitely wasn't. 
Dyed mints.  I dyed blue ones too. I like how speckled they turned out. 
In process.

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