Product Description

This is part pastry art and part architecture modelling, but making gingerbread houses is all winter-holiday and Christmas-time fun! These forty scrumptious-looking projects are perfect for anyone of any age with an urge to bake & decorate. Complete easy-to-follow instructions from an experienced pastry chef, illustrated step-by-photographic-step in full colour.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46515 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Amazon.com
Miniature houses have an undeniable appeal, especially when they're made out of food. But the architectural achievements in this guide are so charming and sometimes so elaborate that it's hard to imagine actually eating them; they're meant to be admired, not devoured. From rustic to royal, humble to ornate, this eclectic assortment ranges from cooking-school complex to child-simple. Some were even designed by kids and could certainly be constructed by them. (Just be sure to buy extra trimmings, since the budding architects are bound to do some nibbling!)

The authors lay solid groundwork in the introductory section, explaining the key points of gingerbread building, pattern making, and utilizing various types of trimmings, and offer basic recipes for gingerbread dough, royal icing, marzipan, pastillage, and fondant. Then it's on to the structures themselves, contributed by more than four dozen designers. Houses, cabins, inns, chapels, castles, lighthouses, even whole little villages drip with snowy icing, as candies, cookies, and other goodies mimic stone, brick, shingle, stucco, logs, and landscaping. This is not a step-by-step guide but rather a gallery of wonderful ideas, with photos of each creation and some very general suggestions about making them. The photography is not high quality but is adequate enough to show detail, and templates are included for many of the structures. One designer even found an ingenious solution to the edibility dilemma, turning the flat roof of her elaborate Victorian concoction into a serving surface for Christmas cookies. --Amy Handy

Synopsis
From basic construction to decorating and baking, this guide to the fine art of the gingerbread house includes easy-to-follow instructions for forty projects--a gingerbread birdhouse, a carousel, a haunted house, and much more. 18,000 first printing.

Customer Reviews

Really disappointing
If you are seeking the inside secrets to gingerbread artistry, don't expect much from this book. This book doesn't even begin to cover the many gingerbread/food techniques currently available -- and that home builders can use -- which mimic real-life or fantasy -- building structures and contents. I thought that many of the instructions shown were too simple and general -- the reader deserved to read more details, more inside information on how to work with food items to create effects -- especially since the author is a pastry chef! The book's description also promises photos of the Grove Park Inn's gingerbread competition entries. But if you expect to see the competition's top of the line entries featuring incredible details, don't. I looked forward to receiving this book. I'm sorry I bought it.

Artistic, Excellent Photography, Good Variety!
Highly recommend for your baking library! Lots of great ideas, good instructions, basic templates but lots of room for your own personal taste.

Worth the buy!

Wonderful Baking Must Have
This is an excellent book with simple, clear and easy to follow instructions with plenty of room for individuality.

Photography is crisp, clear and uncluttered.

Highly recommend just for viewing pleasure if not for anything else!