Hi. I know it's been a while since my last post, but hey, I DID warn you all that I am busy!!
Last month I was perusing my local Bulk Barn shop and found these adorable horse-shaped cookie cutters that immediately made me think of my friend MaryBeth who owns TomLynn Acres, a horse farm in Enniskillen Twp, Ontario.
Another friend of mine, C (who is not a fan of social media and so shall remain unnamed), had bought a box of President's Choice gingerbread cookie mix by mistake, thinking the box contained finished cookies. C isn't interested in baking, so she passed it along to me, so I whipped up a batch of horse-shaped cookies for MaryBeth's Christmas present and delivered them to her that weekend. The cookies stayed soft for several days when stored in air-tight containers and had a great spicy flavour. It is a good mix to use if you're not a fan of baking from scratch. I would just recommend sifting the contents before mixing with your wet ingredients.
I decided to experiment with rolling methods. Because I don't like the mess of using a floured surface, I tried rolling the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper. This worked GREAT, especially when I cut the cookies an inch apart, then pulled away the unused dough to leave the cut pieces on the bottom piece of parchment paper. I was able to just slide the paper with the cut cookies onto my baking sheet and pop them right into the oven. Easy peasy!
I fell in love with the cookie cutter, and I wondered what else I could make with it. I looked up "Gingerbread Barn" on Google and Pintrest. Then I searched for "Gingerbread circus." Finally, I searched for "Gingerbread Carousel." Bingo!
The one I found was adorable! It had perfectly pipped white icing in all the right places. It had adorable teeny tiny little horses. It's basically just baking triangles, rectangles, and sticking them together with royal icing.
How hard could this be?
I measured my horse cutters and decided that my carousel needed to be bigger than the template that I had found, so I printed it at 150%. I cut out the template and felt very impressed with myself.
I looked at the blog again. I didn't notice any instructions. Oops. "How do I assemble this thing???" I wondered. I felt intimidated.
I procrastinated for three days. I am a fantastic procrastinator!
I had already talked this project up to my daughter and my friends, so I decided to suck it up and get over my fear of failure.
I used a gingerbread cookie recipe from Jean Paré's cookie book and rolled up my sleeves. I cut out the pieces for my carousel and baked them. As they came out of the oven, I stacked the layers of cookies on the parchment paper on top of each other and then wrapped the whole thing with plastic wrap to set overnight.
The next day I made Royal icing and put it in an icing bag finished off with a Wiltons #5 tip. I should have used a #10 tip instead. The icing was far too thick to come out of the piping bag. I could have added a couple tablespoons of hot water to thin the icing out a bit, but I decided to just grab a butter knife and spread the icing on the edges of the pieces.
The roof went together easily. The centre pillar was more tricky. The pieces are long and thin, so one of the pieces had broken. I glued it together with royal icing and left it to set.
I attached the horse cookies to candy canes and finished attaching the side panels to the roof. I added small star-shaped cookies to the gates.
The next day I connected the centre pillar to the base, set up the horses and gates, and then attached the roof to the pillar. I let the icing set and then covered the whole thing in plastic wrap.
It looked really derpy. The icing was all chunky and it looked like a mess.
I took it to our family dinner. The grandkids loved it. My boys liked it, too.
Surprisingly, the gingerbread was still very soft and fresh.
I swore I would never make another one of those carousels ever again, but now that a week has passed I am looking at the experience through rose coloured glasses. It gets easier every time we try, right?
Next time, I will definitely make the icing a little more watery and use a bigger tip. Putting the pieces together in stages was still a good idea, but I think I will put the centre pillar together first, two sides at a time instead of three.
Lastly, during my searches I saw some finished carousels available for sale on different websites for $90 and up. They are underpriced. I do not want to begin to think about how one would go about packing them for shipment so they don't break!
The template for the carousel can be found here: http://pysselfabriken.wixsite.com/diyblog/single-post/2015/12/4/PDF-mall-till-pepparkakskarusell
The cookie recipe is in Jean Paré's Cookies cookbook.
The Royal icing recipe is two egg whites beaten with a quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar, then add 4 cups of icing sugar (confectioners sugar) and mix together. I added two tablespoons of hot water to the mix to improve the "mortar-like" performance and texture of the icing.
Please do try this recipe/project and show me up in the comments below!
Last month I was perusing my local Bulk Barn shop and found these adorable horse-shaped cookie cutters that immediately made me think of my friend MaryBeth who owns TomLynn Acres, a horse farm in Enniskillen Twp, Ontario.
Another friend of mine, C (who is not a fan of social media and so shall remain unnamed), had bought a box of President's Choice gingerbread cookie mix by mistake, thinking the box contained finished cookies. C isn't interested in baking, so she passed it along to me, so I whipped up a batch of horse-shaped cookies for MaryBeth's Christmas present and delivered them to her that weekend. The cookies stayed soft for several days when stored in air-tight containers and had a great spicy flavour. It is a good mix to use if you're not a fan of baking from scratch. I would just recommend sifting the contents before mixing with your wet ingredients.
I decided to experiment with rolling methods. Because I don't like the mess of using a floured surface, I tried rolling the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper. This worked GREAT, especially when I cut the cookies an inch apart, then pulled away the unused dough to leave the cut pieces on the bottom piece of parchment paper. I was able to just slide the paper with the cut cookies onto my baking sheet and pop them right into the oven. Easy peasy!
I fell in love with the cookie cutter, and I wondered what else I could make with it. I looked up "Gingerbread Barn" on Google and Pintrest. Then I searched for "Gingerbread circus." Finally, I searched for "Gingerbread Carousel." Bingo!
The one I found was adorable! It had perfectly pipped white icing in all the right places. It had adorable teeny tiny little horses. It's basically just baking triangles, rectangles, and sticking them together with royal icing.
How hard could this be?
I measured my horse cutters and decided that my carousel needed to be bigger than the template that I had found, so I printed it at 150%. I cut out the template and felt very impressed with myself.
I looked at the blog again. I didn't notice any instructions. Oops. "How do I assemble this thing???" I wondered. I felt intimidated.
I procrastinated for three days. I am a fantastic procrastinator!
I had already talked this project up to my daughter and my friends, so I decided to suck it up and get over my fear of failure.
I used a gingerbread cookie recipe from Jean Paré's cookie book and rolled up my sleeves. I cut out the pieces for my carousel and baked them. As they came out of the oven, I stacked the layers of cookies on the parchment paper on top of each other and then wrapped the whole thing with plastic wrap to set overnight.
The next day I made Royal icing and put it in an icing bag finished off with a Wiltons #5 tip. I should have used a #10 tip instead. The icing was far too thick to come out of the piping bag. I could have added a couple tablespoons of hot water to thin the icing out a bit, but I decided to just grab a butter knife and spread the icing on the edges of the pieces.
The roof went together easily. The centre pillar was more tricky. The pieces are long and thin, so one of the pieces had broken. I glued it together with royal icing and left it to set.
I attached the horse cookies to candy canes and finished attaching the side panels to the roof. I added small star-shaped cookies to the gates.
The next day I connected the centre pillar to the base, set up the horses and gates, and then attached the roof to the pillar. I let the icing set and then covered the whole thing in plastic wrap.
It looked really derpy. The icing was all chunky and it looked like a mess.
I took it to our family dinner. The grandkids loved it. My boys liked it, too.
Surprisingly, the gingerbread was still very soft and fresh.
I swore I would never make another one of those carousels ever again, but now that a week has passed I am looking at the experience through rose coloured glasses. It gets easier every time we try, right?
Next time, I will definitely make the icing a little more watery and use a bigger tip. Putting the pieces together in stages was still a good idea, but I think I will put the centre pillar together first, two sides at a time instead of three.
Lastly, during my searches I saw some finished carousels available for sale on different websites for $90 and up. They are underpriced. I do not want to begin to think about how one would go about packing them for shipment so they don't break!
The template for the carousel can be found here: http://pysselfabriken.wixsite.com/diyblog/single-post/2015/12/4/PDF-mall-till-pepparkakskarusell
The cookie recipe is in Jean Paré's Cookies cookbook.
The Royal icing recipe is two egg whites beaten with a quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar, then add 4 cups of icing sugar (confectioners sugar) and mix together. I added two tablespoons of hot water to the mix to improve the "mortar-like" performance and texture of the icing.
Please do try this recipe/project and show me up in the comments below!
