A couple of years ago, whilst living in London, my housemate and I also purchased an Ikea Gingerbread House only for the mice to find it and devour it's walls before we even opened it. I was determined to build this one before any creature got it's mitts on it.
This time around, I carefully unwrapped my house from it's box to discover that the walls were already broken! NO! This may've had something to do with the fact that whilst at Ikea, I was quite nearly crushed by hundreds of Gingerbread Houses when an Ikea staff member crashed his cart into the already unstable tower of boxed gingerbread walls... After I pulled myself from the wreckage, I fished out a boxed house that didn't seem to have been damaged. Wrong.
This brings me back to the fateful afternoon when I tried to put the house together. When I discovered that the sugary walls were already broken, I figured I was clever enough to put them back together. I followed the Ikea instructions on the side of the pack to make the 'glue' that would hold the house together. The instructions were simple - 'melt sugar in a pot and stir constantly.' Ok... I could do that, even though it sounded odd. Surely it needed water? Oh well, I'd follow the instructions - the good people at Ikea must know better.
After what seemed an eternity, my sugar finally started to melt ( I cheated and added a bit of water..). I got to work extremely quickly and attempted to put a wall back together. It worked... sort of. The sugar was drying up faster that I thought it would! I tried to glue two walls together, but with my sugar quickly becoming toffee, it was hard to brush and on and hold walls together at the same time.
A few minutes later, frustration growing, my sugar was officially stuck to my beautiful Circulon pan and had set hard as a rock. At this point, my house's walls also collapsed leaving me with a gingerbread mess! Christmas frustration took over and I decided to destroy the house, which left me with a lovely platter of gingerbread 'shapes.' Very festive indeed....
I was left with a platter of gingerbread bits (which weren't even that tasty!) and a saucepan full of hard sugar... Thank God for Circulon though! Amazing products - the sugar came right out after a bit of soaking and didn't even damage the pan!
After two failed houses, I don't plan to buy another one this year. Those Ikea branded houses may be a bargain, but it's not much of a bargain if you can't see the results and gasp at the splendour of an iced Gingerbread House complete with M&M's for decorations!
This year I'm leaving it to the experts.
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