DIY Hogwarts in Gingerbread

I know I'm late doing this but anyway...

Our gingerbreadhouse-projects have gone from little lavvu's to gingerbread-robots. It's come to that point where people are waiting to see what becomes of our project at Christmas-time, and this year was no different. So we figured we'd WOW them.

So we set out to make Hogwarts, from Harry Potter. Its a huge project, and one that certainly have some challenges to it; the biggest one being the Hogwarts Tower, that is the trademark Hogwarts building. Its huge. And round. And we'd have to make it in gingerbread, because we're not on Cake Boss and we don't use non-edible parts.

Day 1: Made our own blueprint and template for the buildings. Lots of studying the photos, discussing the looks and the easiest way to do things (and the prettiest) some

mathematical equations... As my mom said it; "If you're still friends after this, I'm impressed". Turns out we're a pretty impressive lot! Jerry and Lise in picture.

Day 2: Cut out the pieces. Yeah. It took a day and "some kilos" of gingerbread-dough. Which

thankfully my mom have perfected through the

years! We left them to cool off in the hallway, where we kept the hallway-window open. I was so paranoid that some hungry crows would come peck at them, but thankfully they left us alone.

Of course the pieces for the different houses are sorted on each their paper. All the long "sticks" are the towers, in varying sizes.

Day 3: Assembly time! Now this is usually where we laugh, cry and hate ourselves and each other. But it went well. It was a very long day though, I think we worked on it for about 10 hours. Jerry got the daunting task of making the peak of the Hogwarts Tower which is too big for a Ice cream-cone to fit on. But it has to be edible (even if we'd never actually eat it), else its cheating. Solution? Ice cream-cone + marshmallows and Rice Crispies, glued together with melted sugar. We then coated all the rooftops with Marzipan colored to fit the Hogwarts roofs Green-blueish color.

Day 4: Decorating! Usually we have 1-2 units to decorate, so decoration usually becomes spectacular, if I may say so myself. I was a bit worried we'd be bored and sloppy at the end of this, but we were all so invested in the project that we managed to keep it together. In spite of some problems with the piping.

Admission: We did use ONE non-edible part. A Porcelain Button my mom had lying that had a clock printed on it. We thought it fit beautifully on the clock tower.

Day 5: Making of the Figurines. Gumpaste.

Day 6: Making it all come together! Making sure the light-fixtures fit. Icing the whole board that we used as support to make it look like snow. (Cotton's too main-stream, man!)

The result...? Next blogpost, please!