Sometimes, it's all about easy. But when it's a gingerbread spectacular... bring it on.
I'm no gingerbread guru, but I am a big fan of careful planning and ideally having a couple of runs at it - one block of time to plan, draw, and shop, another to bake, and a third to ice and construct.
I was inspired this year by the Murder on the Orient Express film to create a gingerbread Europe.
First I decided on the buildings I wanted - Big Ben and St Paul's in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, St Mark's in Venice, the statue of Franz Josef on his horse in Vienna, St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, plus the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Then I drew them out on paper and thought about whether the sizes fitted on my tray. The Colosseum in Rome was binned at this point - too big.
Then I drew them out on baking paper.
I lined my tray with Chocolate Leibniz biscuits because I wanted it to look special.
I made a triangular prop to put at the back of each building, and the plan was to fix the buildings to the base using hot caramel.
This was a really stupid idea because the instant the hot caramel met the chocolate biscuit it melted, causing Big Ben to fall over and crack into many pieces. Language was used. Big Ben had to be made again, smaller this time as I was slightly losing my nerve.
Then I had the far better idea of laying down a sausage of white marzipan under each building and then just ramming the gingerbread into it.
The fun bit was the icing - standard Royal icing made with egg whites and icing sugar only for the piping, plus some bits of shop bought fondant rolled out to fit. As to decorations, I think its the sparkles which make it, so ransack your cupboards for anything which might work.
When it came to the multicoloured roofs of St Basils I laid the fondant down and then painted it with food dye which was way less fiddly than making individual pieces.
My son who is 11 made a train out of Cadbury's Wispa bars plus Fudge Bite wheels.
GINGERBREAD RECIPE:
250g unsalted butter (I use the soft Lurpak as it is easier to work with)
200g dark muscovado sugar
7 tbsp golden syrup
600g plain flour
4 tsp bicarb of soda
4tsp ground ginger
There are lots of others which work, and I sometimes use an American one which makes incredibly hard biscuits which are more suitable for very complicated 3-d constructions, but these taste good and are quite easy to work with.
METHOD:
Melt the butter syrup and sugar in a pan. Mix in a large bowl with the dry ingredients. It will be very stiff.
Roll out the dough chunk by chunk on baking paper, thinner than a pound coin but thicker than a 10p. Be sure to dust everything with flour to prevent sticking.
Cut around the paper templates.
Bake for 12 minutes at 200c/180c fan. You will have to do this in batches.
When its out of the oven just take the biscuit out of the tray still on the paper. Then put your next batch on the tray and shove in the oven.
Important: Allow the biscuit to cool before you take off the paper otherwise things will bend. Any structural engineer will tell you that bendy buildings spell trouble.
'Never underestimate the power of marzipan.'