2018 Halloween Gingerbread Barns!

When my oldest granddaughter was five I wanted a fun holiday activity we could do together, something that was unique to us, so decided we would make a gingerbread Halloween house. I made a basic house and we decorated with candies. I had to do most of the frosting work, she added the candy. A few years later her little sister joined us and a few years after that, her cousin. My granddaughter is now 13 and will start high school next fall.  By my math, we have been decorating gingerbread houses for nine years now.

This year we decided we wanted to do a barn/farmhouse scene. I began making the dough, cutting and baking the pieces a few weeks ago. I made enough for 4 barns as I also decorated one for my 4-year old grandson.  He is too young and fidgety still to join us with all the frosting and candy! That also gave me the chance to create, too. We met recently to do our decorating. My husband, the girls' Papa, is our gingerbread contractor and he assembled all the various pieces into barns. I made sugar ponds, apple trees and made sure we had all the necessary supplies.

I love interacting with the girls, it's a casual day, lots of chatting and laughing. I enjoy seeing the cooperation they have with each other, one's skill is better than the other in an area, but they all help each other out. I especially love seeing their creativity come through.  A few days before our gingerbread day, the youngest granddaughter and I were making farm carts out of pretzel sticks and royal icing.  She thought it would be neat to make benches using the same technique. On our decorating day she made herself a bench then showed her cousin how to make one, too.

I told the girls they could make a fall gingerbread barn and farm setting or make it spooky, with the addition of ghosts, spiders, and creepy eyes. Each cardboard base had a barn and some trees; they could add apples (red candy), eyes, or leave them plain. I made various colors of icing, had lots of candy and cereal to choose from. It was fun to watch them create their own masterpiece, to see their personalities shine through.  They were all different and creative.

My gingerbread was soft this year, so we had a lot of sagging with the roofs. To compensate I frosted them with red royal icing, using a large serrated tip. They were very bright!  I wanted our barns to look age so intentionally didn't make the roofs perfect, they had a lot of imperfections. My husband was disappointed with my building skills, he said I should have piped from bottom to top, instead of top to bottom.  Picky, picky!

The ponds were made with Isomalt, a sugar product and dyed blue with food coloring paste.  To make the pond shape, I made a mold out of aluminum foil and poured the hot sugar mixture into it. They turned out great!  We played with fondant and made ducks. I got real ambitious and added a chicken to my barn. My grandson loved that!

To make the trees, using royal icing, I "glued" three candy sticks together.  I thinly rolled out fondant and then put it through an embossing folder with a wood grain design to it.  We then wrapped the fondant around the candy sticks making our tree trunks. The tree foliage was made with popcorn balls.  I wish I would have made them bigger, they weren't full enough in relation to the height of the tree trunks. But, like I told my Hubby, we weren't entering these in a gingerbread competition!

The girls were here about 3 hours.  It took me over an hour to clean up the kitchen afterwards!  Thankfully, I used a plastic tablecloth on the table.  I just rolled it up and all the debris was contained.  But the floors and island took a beating; candy, frosting, and cereal were everywhere! I had to mop the floor, wipe down cabinets, in addition to putting everything away. I was exhausted and my Hubby took me out to pizza for dinner afterwards. But, I'm eagerly looking forward to our gingerbread adventures in 2019.  I can spare the time for cleaning, making memories with my grandchildren is priceless!