Gingerbread Houses and 15th Birthdays

Once again, in keeping with our yearly tradition, we celebrated my middle "Sprout"s birthday with a delightfully messy, sugar-filled annual Gingerbread House-making Birthday party.


















Teen girls and lots of sugar. It gets crazier every year.

But every year the girls are older, they can do more of the prep work themselves, clean up more of their own mess, and their creations get prettier and more lavish.

Everyone loves it. I have Moms calling in September asking if we're making houses again this year.

I always have the house "parts" baked and cooled ahead of time, and after many years of doing this, we have it down to a science.

This year, however, I used the gingerbread recipe from Vegan Dad's blog, as I haven't really liked the texture of the other vegan gingerbread recipes I've used.

I'm not much of a recipe follower, which is why you'll rarely see links to other recipes here; there's millions of better recipes than mine, I just stubbornly prefer to muddle through until I've concocted my own creation (or disaster!).

However, with my daughter's time-honored Gingerbread party I didn't want to experiment. And happily, (as you'll see) the gingerbread turned out great.
(Here are some good cut-out-and-assembly instructions, we use slightly smaller measurements since we're making 6 houses...That equals a LOT of dough!

We DO use commercial Royal Icing however, just to "cement" the house parts together. Yes it has egg-whites. But any and all attempts I have made at decent vegan royal icing have ended up in collapsed houses that look somewhat like a Hurricane Katrina re-creation... Not the effect you're going for at a Holiday party!

However, once the houses are assembled and "set", we mix up some fairly decent vegan frosting for the final (and fun, messy, sticky, icky, sugar-coated) step of decorating...

And no, I am sure some of the candy isn't vegan. Bring on the vegan Police.

Here is my approximate icing recipe (and <-- here is what happens when big sisters get bored with Gingerbread houses); play with it according to the humidity in your kitchen and how much liquid your powdered sugar absorbs.

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"Almost" Royal Icing

7 Tablespoons water

4 Tablespoon Ener-G egg replacer (don't use another brand)

7 cups of powdered sugar (you can make non-bone-char powdered sugar with beet sugar and cornstarch in a coffee grinder, Whole Foods sells vegan powdered sugar too)

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Mix dr ingredients together. Add to water. I don't usually add all the powdered sugar/cream of tarter, just keep mixing it in until the right consistency. It still takes longer to set up than royal icing

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And just in case you're thinking this is a worthless post with nothing but frosting, here are the amazing vegan chocolate-chip muffins that big sister Jessika made for everyone for breakfast. (She made the birthday cake too! )

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Pretty generous of her since she had to put up with a housefull of "younger" girls all night!

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Chocolate-Chip-Banana Muffins

3 very ripe bananas
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 cup sugar
2 cups sifted whole wheat pastry flour (or white, or whatever)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips, chopped to make them a bit smaller, and tossed with a bit of cornstarch so they don't "sink" in the batter

Pre-heat oven to 360 degrees.
In a large bowl, mash the bananas with a fork till mushy.

Add the oil and sugar and mix together until creamy.
In a separate bowl combine the dry stuff.

Combine with the banana mixture, stirring gently just to combine.
Grease (WELL!) or line a muffin pan, and fill each muffin about 2/3 full with batter. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean.

Here's hoping your Holidays are sweet and memorable.

'Tis the Season; Concerts and Cookies

I don't know how all my fellow Bloggers do it! These past few pre-Christmas weeks have been INSANE!! BUSY!! I haven't even LOOKED at my computer!

Let's start with the last two nights alone: 2 concerts, dozens of cookies and all manner of Holiday craziness. But I guess that's typical of this time of year...

First of all, a huge deal to my two teens, I let them go to a pop concert BY THEMSELVES for the first time. They've been looking forward to this for months now!

OK, cast aside all images of smoke-filled crowds swaying to The Grateful Dead, it was only The Jonas Brothers, pretty tame Disney Channel stuff and all.

And maybe I AM overprotective and "everyone else" really does get to go to these things without their parents... but still, it was after dark, in a huge arena, in a large city; makes an ol' fashioned mom a lil' nervous, you know?

Despite my fears, things turned out fine and the girls even came away with some great photos (if you care anything at all about The Jonas Brothers, which I don't much but hey, I remember back in the day... I would have KILLED to have 6th row seats at Duran Duran...).

Two nights after the auditorium of screaming fans, in drastic contrast - we toned things down tonight for a traditional and beautiful Children's Chorale Christmas Concert.

My two youngest Sprouts are Chorale members and the entire evening sparkled. Call me nostalgic and old fashioned, but seeing all the kids up front with velvet skirts, shiny hair bows, starched collars and sharp bow-ties; hearing traditional carols, the soaring pipe organ accompaniment; it all makes me a bit misty-eyed. Yeah, I'm a little weird that way, but I like Christmas with the old fashioned Christian symbols, celebrations, routines and traditions; not turned into some generic Winter Holiday.

But I digress; After the Christmas concert there was a short reception with coffee, cocoa and cookies donated by parents... You knew I couldn't blog without some FOOD, right?

So in good vegan form, I made basic spice cookies with cream-cheese frosting. All vegan. And gone before any of the other sparkley-sugar-coated Holiday offerings, which made me feel pretty good.

Soft Ginger- Spice Cookies

3/4 cup Earth Balance
1 cup sugar
Ener-G Egg Replacer for 1 egg
1/4 cup molasses, honey or corn syrup (I cannot STAND molasses so I use something else... the cookies are less "gingerbread-like" but still very good)
2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp finely grated ginger ( I use an orange zester, it takes a while, make sure and include the ginger juice too!)
1 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cream together the margarine, sugar and egg replacer until smooth.

Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine well.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Roll the dough in to 1 inch balls and place on a baking sheet.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until done. Cool on wire rack.

Frosting (which isn't pictured, I added it later):

8 oz. Tofutti cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup Earth Balance

3 cups vegan powdered sugar (Whole Foods and most health food stores sell it)

1/2 t. vanilla

1/2 t. almond extract

Using an electric mixer or in a large bowl with a hand held mixer, cream the Tofutti and margerine. Add the sugar, vanilla, and almond extract, and continue to beat the mixture until light and fluffy. Spread on cooled cookies.

Enjoy!

I'll be back sooner, I promise. Christmas craziness is settling down around these parts...