A few years ago for Christmas, Amber got a special NordicWare pan just for making gingerbread house pieces. And for the last few years we’ve been buying our gingerbread kits at Costco and Trader Joes. Why? Because making them at home with the pan was just too much work. But this year, something snapped inside my brain and I made the decision to make the houses from scratch.
More than being really difficult, the trouble with going homemade is just how long it takes. First we made the dough. This was fun and Jillian was a big help. But then you have to bake the shapes three times for each house. The roof and long side get baked twice and the other side of the pan, the small sides and chimney, get baked just once. But you can’t bake them back-to-back because the pan is hot. You have to wait for it to cool and that takes hours. So, for each house it took me three days. I’d make the dough and then bake each side a night. Then repeat the process for the second house. I wanted my own house, but I was too lazy to make any more.
Once all of the pieces were baked I took another day to assemble the houses so they could dry and be sturdy enough for the kids to work with. We used a pretty standard royal icing recipe and it gave us structurally sound little houses.
Finally, a week later, we were ready to decorate these little guys. Amber bought a ton of candy and there was plenty to go around. Interestingly, even though we divvied everything up 50/50 some strange things happened. Some of Wesley’s candy bowls were empty even though hardly any of them were on the house. Where did they go?
To start with we let the kids go there own way. Once they had made good progress Amber and I each started adding little touches and giving the kids some more complicated ideas. They each came up with great ideas of their own and copied from each other when they saw something they liked.
They had fun. Here they are with the finished product. The houses had to be moved to the mantle almost immediately since pieces of candy were being removed even before the frosting was dry.
Tags: Amber, Christmas, Gingerbread, Jillian, Joshua, Wesley
Saturday November 26th Wesley turned 6 and we had his party the same day! It is the first time this has happened.
They are ready to celebrate!
in the tv room
the green room
vests, bandanas, eye-patches & gold earrings for everyone.
the goodie bags
the kids and I made repurposed crayons in pirate shapes.
looking in to the front door area
arr...
arr...
arr...
arr...
After a lunch of macaroni & cheese, pasta salad, green salad, rolls & fruit… it was time to hit the piñata.
Wesley starts us off.
Then Addison
Jillian
Stellanne
Aidan
Lilly
Ben
Aidan
then Wesley again with a strong finish!
they quickly filled their treasure chests.
Then it was cake time. To see more about the cake you can see the post I did about it here.
Before we sang to Wesley, the kids who wanted to – got to launch the cannons too.
Wesley launching the cannons.
a nice and powerful jump.
Jillian launching the cannons. The small black dot near the edge of the table is one of the cannon balls.
Singing "Happy Birthday" to Wesley. (not quite sure what Jillian is doing...)
Wesley is still talking about his party and had such a wonderful birthday!
Thank you to all of our guests – you really made it magical for him.
Tags: Amber, Jillian, Joshua, Pirate Birthday, Pirate Ship Cake, Wesley, Wesley's 6th Birthday
Wesley wanted a pirate ship cake with real cannons to launch for his 6th birthday.
Joshua’s cannon design was great and really launched his hand carved cannon balls. Wesley and Jillian both loved playing with it before it went into the cake.
Then I needed to put it in the cake…
Wesley wanted blueberry cake, so I found a blueberry bunt cake recipe and made it in 9×13 pans.
Here is how I created it:
Joshua thought to reuse this blue basket for the base. He then cut a piece of thin wood to fit in the basket for a strong base for the cake.
Here is the sculpted cake with a blueberry cream cheese filling between the layers.
I had to use a lot of skewers in the cake to keep the layers together.
I put on a thin crumb coating, then Joshua and I put in the cannons. The green thing is the launching pad taken from a game we have called FroggO.
The stern of the cake ship.
The bow of the cake ship.
The "front" of the cake with the cannons facing out.
Then I used brown gel coloring to make the cream cheese frosting brown. Blue water was added then ocean animals were glued onto the basket to make it look like it is really in the sea.
The front of the cake.
The sails are made out of chopsticks and fancy paper.
The stern of the ship. The rigging, wheel and ladder are made with melted chocolate.
"W"'s and upside down "w"'s and the #6
The back side of the cake.
There is even a plank...with shark infested waters.
The bow of the ship.
Close up of the bow.
Hours spent:
Building the cannon & carving the balls – 2 hours
Baking the cake and making the frosting – 3 hours
Carving & decorating the ship – 5 hours
Total hours spent: 10. 
Tags: Amber, Cake, Cannon, Joshua, Pirate Ship Cake, Wesley, Wesley's 6th Birthday
Happy birthday sweet boy!
