Edible Support For Gingerbread Architecture????
Baking By MysieS Updated 3 Dec 2015 , 5:20pm by johnson6ofus
My daughter wants to enter a gingerbread contest. So far she has considered Neuschwanstein Castle, St. Basil's Cathedral, and is now leaning towards the tower of Barad-dur. (The kid isn't afraid to go big!) The only catch is that the constructions need to be 100% edible.
Normally I would be talking about dowels and foam core engineering at this point, but I can't go that way.
Any thoughts on how to tackle this?
The "old" way was to make a gingerbread "post" (think 4x4). So two walls go together, you put a "post" into the corner so the wall has something to hang on to. You have 4 walls, with 4 posts in each corner. Assemble with royal icing, wrap center in wax paper to protect, then tie with ribbon or large rubber bands until dry. Work in phases to let things dry.
A cylinder is made by covering pvc frame with waxed paper, applying "posts" to cover the PVC, again secure with rubber band and let dry. Remove PVC and waxed paper.
Royal icing is great glue, just allow for it to dry. Many, many, steps....
Use thicker ginger bread too.
Look at different gingerbread recipes, too. I have a book on swedish gingerbread houses and the pictures are amazing and the gingerbread is very thin. If i used my standard gingerbread recipe, they would just droop over time. I want to get the swedish one but need to type it all into Google Translate...and that's a lot of weird lettering!
LOL... funny because I use a German gingerbread recipe, and they go "big and chunky" rather than thin and crispy.
substitute honey for the molasses -- honey will hold for months -- molasses doesn't hold -- i gotta good recipe -- will post or pm shortly
For a first timer with limited support options, consider going smaller, rather than larger and have it crash. Like most decorating, it is all about the details. If you spend too much time on size and structure, you will fail on detail work. IMHO
Working on the melted lifesavers windows, fences, bushes, etc...takes time.
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