I am so excited to share this post with you all! This was a true labour of love!

Christmas has always had an effect on me.  I get so excited by the prospect of filling our household with Christmas trim and decorations and Christmas trim isn’t complete without gingerbread!

I was really chuffed with last year’s gingerbread train and it was going to be hard to top it! However, I’m always up for a challenge and I was able to achieve that with this gingerbread carousel!  I’m no architect, so I always draw my stencils by hand (using plain paper) and then tape the paper cut-outs together to see if the paper holds.  I figure if the paper mostly holds, then surely, gingerbread must! 

No cookie cutters were involved in the making of this carousel, not even the horse!

 

This time around, I decided to decorate each gingerbread panel before assembly (which I was a bit wary of given it could end up collapsing into a massive pile of heap)! But it makes for decorating SO much easier and you can really achieve a more polished finish!  After you-tubing how to decorate with royal icing (so brilliant that you can do this!), I learnt how to get my royal icing to the right consistency for various purposes.  This is absolute key to gingerbread structures and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure it out (oh the heart ache that could have been avoided along the way!)!  I used to have my icing too runny which meant that it would spread too thin (not good for delicate piping) and be slow setting (not good for when you want the structure to set quickly).  It seems all very obvious now in hindsight!

With the right consistency, I was able to accomplish such fine detail.  I used a Wilton tip number 1 to pipe the carousel mirrors and hearts etc.  And no surprises that I chose an all pink and white colour theme.  I know pink is getting way old now, but try as I do to stray from it, I can never bring myself to experiment with other colours!

I’m absolutely in love with this carousel! Love love love!

Little girl and I ended up making a massive batch of gingerbread dough, so I’m very tempted to make something else.  But for the moment, I’m happy just to sit back and enjoy this!