Uptown Gingerbread house
What could be more uptown than a brownstone complete with Scottie dogs and a magenta, apple green and yellow color scheme. This gingerbread house just screams fun in the city! It reminds me of fun festive shopping days and the bright lights all over the city.
This gingerbread house is very stylized and simple, but gets its point across nonetheless. I love the simplicity and the non-traditional color scheme.
The form of this gingerbread house is very basic; just a tall rectangle with holes cut out for the windows. The corners of the brownstone are finished off with brown gum paste bricks that I molded from an impression mat I have. Notice that little crack between the two windows? It’s all about the character and I feel like this crack is adding to the authenticity of the brownstone. Lots of old buildings have cracks, right?
The royal icing piping around the doors and windows was added after it dried. I didn’t pipe the details directly onto the house. Instead, I piped onto parchment paper, let it dry, and then used additional dots of royal icing to attach to the gingerbread house.
Who doesn’t love a Scottie dog with a polka dot scarf? The scarf is made of gum paste and the dots are made using the tip of a small pastry tube to cut out tiny circles. The circles are cut out on the green scarf using the same pastry tip and then the tiny white dots are placed into the holes.
This dapper little Scottie is perfect in his grey bow-tie!
For the trees, I kept it simple with silver, grey, and magenta baubles. The modern decorations add to the sophistication of this Uptown Gingy!
Almost every gingerbread house that I make has some drama! Unexpected things definitely do happen when you’re working with an edible medium. In this case, the original windows were rice paper. Due to the lack of humidity in my house and the royal icing further causing dry out, the windows cracked, and one even fell out.
See all of the cracks up close? You can see the texture of the rice paper and the many cracks.
To solve this problem, I very carefully carved a hole in the roof of the house. This was risky business, but I was determined to fix those windows.
I replaced the rice paper windows with my tried and true lasagna windows. This is Barilla brand lasagna. I cut off the frilled edges so that it sits flat against the gingerbread. It is attached with royal icing.
Luckily, this proved successful, and seems like a happy accident after all, because I like the look of the lit up lasagna windows better than the rice paper windows. The lasagna ties in with the yellow window boxes and makes for a warmer feel.
Here are some more shots from the making of this gingy. You can see all of the little details coming together in the upper right. Getting a magenta color that is just right always causes me grief. I found that just painting on cranberry luster dust mixed with vodka is the way to go for that super bright hue. The grates are piped with brown royal icing and the brick veneer that hugs the sides of the brownstone is brown gum paste attached with royal icing.
I almost always display my gingerbread houses on cake stands. This elegant gingy needed a gorgeous white cake stand to compliment the design.
Hope you had fun taking a peek at this one! Now I need a shopping trip to the city!
XO~Sarah
