Christmas Special 2012

Ok, so its been a while since we have been on. Whilst Roz was quite diligent about her posts and the competition I got wrapped up in the details and ended up cooking and never got around to doing the posts. So for me the challenge was a fail and I need to bow my hat to Roz.

Anyway....lets move on. Every year I make a ginger bread house of some description and sometimes it can take large amounts of time. Now that we have a wee one, little boy 8 months old (at the time), called Archie I thought there should be a time limit as the criteria. So the criteria is this, gingerbread house, something that is impressive but doesn't take too long to make and decorate, something that somehow represents the year 2012 and something that is large enough to take to work to please the minions.

Being a fan of LEGO the Tower Bridge provided inspiration in the Olympic year, so I had a template, but how to make it edible and make it quickly. After a few rough calculations I knew that it would be approx. 10kg, so as I progressed in my plans it needed to support its own weight and I needed to be able to transport it to work easily without it collapsing, and living on a dirt road makes the additional shock and vibration all that more challenging.

So I have a wee plan. Over early December, I start to make the list of all the ingredients I will need. Working out how many batches of ginger bread, caramel, chocolate, icing, biscuit and lollies I would need. It come to mind that I still haven't figured out how to span almost 40cm between the two towers and still make it edible, any cake or biscuit would collapse under its own weight, and whilst solid chocolate would probably work, I had already decided to use Kit Kats for the road and bridge, I wanted something different.

Ginger bread recipe
125g Unsalted butter
1/2 cup of compacted Brown Sugar
1 egg yolk
2 1/2 cups of sifted plain flour
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate soda
3 teaspoons of ground ginger (you can add more or less depending on your taste)
3-4 table spoons of golden syrup - you may need a little more

1. Cream the butter and sugar together
2. Mix in the egg yolk
3. Sift in plain flour, bicarbonate soda and ground ginger. Mix until it is even.
4. Add the golden syrup at intervals until the mixture just binds together
5. Roll it out to required thickness. For the lower levels I roll it to about 1.5cm thick and about 1cm thick for the higher levels. Or cut into the desired shape.
6. Bake in an oven at 160degC for 10-15 mins until it is a light golden brown
7. Let it cool on a rack - this is important, so that it goes hard is capable of support

In a stored sealed container I find it lasts for a few weeks, however certainly for a few days over the period required to assemble it.
 
 To make the required Gingerbread for the towers I worked out the dimensions of each level, internal walls, floors/ceilings and I ended up making 10 batches.
It took about 6 hours to make, and was a long day, I roughly measured out all the shapes required prior to cooking so as to minimise the waste, it only left final trimming once the gingerbread had cooled. As you can probably tell, this left quite a bit of egg white, something I luckily noticed whilst making my shopping list, so I decided to make a meringue bridge covered in a tempered chocolate.
Another thing I had to consider was that I wanted to break up the gingerbread and chocolate a bit, so in the base I embedded a coconut biscuit and some caramel, and then surrounded that with a layer of chocolate to provide the strength.

Coconut biscuit recipe
125g Unsalted butter
1 cup of sifter self-raising flour
1 cup of compacted brown sugar
1 cup of desiccated coconut

1. Lightly grease a pan and put in greaseproof paper, 30cm by 15cm, gives two 15cm squares to use as a base.
2. Melt the butter and combine all the ingredients in a bowl.
3. Use a metal spoon to press down the ingredients in the pan.
4. Cook on 180degC for 10 mins.

Caramel recipe
30g Unsalted butter
395g Nestle Sweetened condensed milk
2 table spoons of golden syrup

1. In a pot on medium, melt the butter and golden syrup and then add the condensed milk.
2. Stir constantly until it starts to bubble (note: you may want to wear gloves as the bubbling caramel can burn).
3. Turn down to low immediately and continue stirring for 5mins .
4. Spread over the cooked biscuit base. Cook on 180degC for 10 mins.
Note: I like put crushed walnuts between the two layers for some extra texture and flavour.

Once the caramel and biscuit has cooled (about 2 hours) then I cut it in half ( the greaseproof paper makes it easy to lift out. Find 2 appropriately sized lunch box container – melt some milk chocolate (I used about 700g) and pour some in each one to coat, then put in the biscuit and caramel and cover in the remaining chocolate. Don’t put it in the fridge; let it set at room temperature. Now you have two bases.
After making all the ginger bread and cutting all the walls and floors I had taken about 9 hours. It took another 2 hours to assemble all the ginger bread with royal icing. It was important to ensure that each cut was level or I might have the leaning tower of Pisa. As I was assembling the 3^rd level I coated the internal walls with royal icing and covered the walls in mini icing Christmas trees – it had a great effect that looked like wall paper.
Once at the top, I put a white chocolate covered marshmallow at each corner and then constructed a central tower out of 4 pieces of Toblerone, one for each tower.
This brings us to the spanning section between the two towers.

Meringue francaise au chocolate recipe (thanks to Adriano Zumbo’s tanzanie recipe)
100g egg whites
100g caster sugar
80g pure icing sugar
20g cocoa powder

1.  Line a tray with greaseproof paper, turn it over and mark 3 x 40cm x 2.5cm rectangle. Turn back over.
2. Put the egg whites and 1 tablespoon of caster sugar into a mixer and mix on medium for 20sec. With motor running add the rest of the sugar until meringue has formed soft peaks (about 5mins).
3. Sift icing sugar and the cocoa together mix in half the meringue gently. Softly fold through the other half.
4. Fill a piping bag with a 8cm nozzle with the meringue mixture. Pipe long straight lines of meringue onto the lined tray so they are just touching.
5. Bake for 3 hours on 110degC to produce a crisp, dry meringue.
Note: I turn the over off and open the door at the end so it cools down slowly.
After covering the meringue in a thin layer of tempered chocolate, I let it set at room temperature which is really quick. After checking that it slots into the slots I made in the towers, all is good and there is only the decorating left. This is a ‘what looks good’ exercise. I used bullets for the balcony on the bridges, jersey caramels for the tiling effect on the corners and around the windows, liquorice straps for the suspension cables and various other lollies, trying to keep a variety of colour and type.

All up it took about 13 hours over a weekend, not bad considering previous years I’ve spent upwards of 50 hours on much greater detail, but this year it was the size over detail. I know it got devoured quickly so it must have tasted alright. I hope you like the photos.

Dan 
4 Feb 2013