~ Gingerbread Houses! The Smell Of Gingerbread Danced In The Air

The smell of gingerbread was still in the air the day after I made gingerbread man cookies. And it was heavenly. All of the houses shown here are from our art museum's annual festival of trees. Enjoy! (Click on the pictures for a larger size to view.)

Sweet Daughter loves gingerbread, and she has many fond memories of going to the nearby bakery for gingerbread man cookies from the time when she was very little. I still stop by there every once in a while even now since it is near the post office. I don't really like gingerbread, but at Christmastime when my little girl would ask for gingerbread man cookies, I was happy to make them. And even though she is quite grown up, I still make them for her each year.

So I began searching the internet for a good recipe. The one I used last year was pretty good, but I was wondering what else out there to try.

I found one recipe on one of those recipe sites that had a couple hundred reviews and lots of stars. It sounded like a winner.

The dough was all ready for my daughter when she got off work so she could do some of the cookie cutting and be here while they were baking. Ooh, gingerbread in the air.

Sadly we were not all that enthusiastic about the cookie. They smelled great, but tasted just kind of OK. There have been a couple of times while searching for recipes that I've landed on that site and I don't think I've kept many recipes from it.

But then I thought of Epicurious, which always has great recipes. Maybe .................

(Isn't a beach hotel/cottage a fun gingerbread house?)

(See the next picture below for the little fawn asleep in the snow.)

Yes! The Epicurious recipe was perfect. It is the first time I ever saw a recipe use crystallized ginger. We really thought it was what made this cookie so delicious. I put the ginger in a small food processor with a half cup of the flour to make the pieces very small. Someone else had posted that idea, and it worked great.

Crystallized ginger can be found at stores like Whole Foods, and our larger Publix has it in the are where they sell bulk nuts and goods like that. So your grocery store might as well.

It's worth looking for it. These were perfect! Hope you have a little baking time this weekend, and the smell of happy gingerbread cookies in the air.

See Y'All Soon ~
Donna