Last night, Cariño and I ventured into Restaurant Row to partake of a tradition neither one of us had been a part of before: making Gingerbread Houses.
It's one of those things I'd read about as a child, or that always makes an appearance in Christmas magazines or specials, "fun things to do with your kids!" type of thing. I'm sure that gingerbread house making happens all over the place, but I always saw it as the quintessential American activity.
Anyway, it couldn't happen in a more incongruous place: the upstairs alcove at the Village Pourhouse, which really is just Joshua Tree with another name. They provided us with super cute house making kits, that included almost everything we'd need to make our house, namely gingerbread, icing, lots and lots of candy.
You begin by pouring an icing foundation, and then it's just a matter of sticking pieces together. Of course, its more time consuming than that. All in all, it took about two hours, and that's without making the thing from scratch. Our finished decorated product is courtesy of Cariño, since I probably would've just stuck candy on to the thing all nilly willy. And I did, on the little tree outside the house. We would've done a better job if we had extra tools, since the kit only comes with plain bags of icing. Our building neighbours were pros at it, and borrowed knives and forks to make a masterpiece of a house: they left a side open so that you could look inside the house. They even made an icing snowman! It was amazing.
But ours came out pretty nice for first timers, I think. Hopefully Cariño's third graders will enjoy it. I know I enjoyed putting it together!
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