In Which I Discover I Cannot Fudge Baked Goods

                 The gingerbread house is happening.  I'm currently waiting for the construction to cool before attempting to make the icing for snowbanks and hiding egregious building errors.  Thank goodness my kid is a big fan of Nailed It!, because this is not going onto the pages of any magazine.

                My mother used to make over a hundred of these things a year, selling them at craft markets around the area.  She had a system down, and because we weren't allowed in the kitchen during construction for safety reasons, it looked effortless.  There would be a little house for each of us to decorate when it was our turn, and we would overload the poor little house with sprinkles and candies and those little metallic decorating balls that you're not supposed to eat.  I totally ate those, and I'm pretty sure that explains pretty much everything about me.

                Mom's houses were solid and well-built, owing to an unbelievable amount of flour and using melted sugar for the construction glue.  When we watched the holiday season of Nailed It, I was stunned to discover that other people honestly believe that they should use icing to construct.  Nobody has time for that.  Melt the sugar and use it as glue.

                I think I went awry when I decided that I didn't need to locate shortening and would use butter instead.  Then I didn't quite get started until after the kids went to bed, so when the recipe said to cool the dough for an hour, I cooled it for exactly an hour.  I'm pretty sure Mom meant a holiday-busy hour, when you get distracted and forget about the dough entirely, equal to about two or three hours.  I also halved the recipe, as I knew I didn't have it in me to make more than one or two houses, while the recipe produces six.  When I cut everything, the dough kept shifting just a bit.  It's put together, but would not pass inspection from even the most corrupt city official.  Alas.

                I ended up cutting one house and a legion of tiny gingerbread boys.  Fuzzy swears we don't have a gingerbread girl cutter, and I'm finally inclined to believe him.  I could have sworn that the set had both, but I think that might have been wishful thinking.  Therefore, our gingerbread house is owned by two gingerbread boys, who are definitely going to fix up the mess the house currently is.  Hopefully, they don't have any bigoted neighbors.

                Everything's probably solidified now, so it's time for me to cut my mother's icing recipe in thirds and get to decorating.  We are doing an outside present exchange at Fuzzy's mother's house, and we're hoping to present it to her there, so I best get it going.  Happy Christmas Eve, everyone.