Festive Gingerbread Prison

It's been a long December. It's our third year of law school, and it was hard to rally for a fifth semester of exams. So cut us some slack on this one...

On the bright side, the gingerbread came out of the oven in beautiful shape. We had all kinds of ideas and decorations for our gingerbread house. Indeed, those ideas flow well after a few cups of brandy-spiked mulled cider, some beer, and some wine. And the movie Four Christmases. (Do not watch this movie without good doses of holiday spirit and holiday spirits.)

Building gingerbread houses while intoxicated, however? Not a good idea. Clearly. We could blame it on the consistency of the frosting--yes, it was a little bit off--but let's be honest here, folks: the outcome of this challenge had quite a bit to do with our good friend alcohol.

Note the unusual triangular shape. This was because we broke a few of our walls while trying to attach them. (See broken wall at left, with clever circular window). We made up for it with Snocap detailing above our (one) window and (one) door. Another highlight is the the jellybean "stone" path up to the "door," which was a window in our original design. We improvised.

Observe also the delightful open-air "exercise yard" on the side of the gingerbread prison, with candy cane guard posts. Or stripper poles, for this is a happy, festive prison.

And the coup de grace--a Necco wafer roof, with shredded coconut "snow." How beautiful. And lest you fear our gingerbread prison is not secure, don't miss the gumdrop alarm lights going off at the front of the roof.

Turn your eyes from the screen so as not to be blinded by the perfect beauty of this festive gingerbread prison.

PS--No children were traumatized (or involved) in the construction of this challenge.

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.