Cupcake Croquembouche - Daring Bakers May 2010

"What is THAT?!" You ask? That's what I have been asking myself while staring at this photo. It was supposed to be a chocolate and raspberry croquembouche, stacked into the shape of a cupcake. But things didn't quite go to plan, so it turned out a little messy. All I think when I look at the photo is PAIN. Burning. Mess. Ouch. Those of you in Australia who watched Masterchef last year will be more than familiar with the croquembouche, and the struggles the contestants had with it - flat choux pastry, sugar burns, collapsing cones. Let me just say, I have a renewed respect for those Masterchef contestants.

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

Life has gotten in the way of my participation in Daring Baker's challenges recently, but it was impossible to pass up this challenge. I've made choux pastry in the past with my eclair notdogs, but I've never assembled an entire croquembouche. And I always love to try something new. Even though...*whispers* I don't like them. Don't hate me! I've just always found choux pastry a little too close to cardboard in texture and flavour, and the combination of it with the hard , crunchy toffee doesn't appeal to me. Perhaps it's just because I experienced too many bad croquembouches at birthday parties, when I all I wanted was a big piece of cake.

But I had to give it a shot. I was curious to see how difficult it would be to create one, without a mould like the metal cone they used in Masterchef. And I wanted to make one that looked like a raspberry cupcake (Get it?? Like me, Raspberri Cupcakes! *snort* yes I'm a total dork :P). So I set about giving it a go. Slow and steady, stress free. I spent one day making the pate a choux; I did one batch with added cocoa powder so they were chocolate, and another batch with pink food colouring. Then I whipped up two batches of pastry cream - one was a gorgeous chocolate crème patissiere and the other was flavoured with raspberry puree. I followed the recipe exactly, though I piped my choux a little smaller than normal as I figured that would make it easier to stack into a weird shape like a cupcake. The little choux puffed up perfectly, hollow and round. It is REALLY fun to bake choux pastry. I love the way they transform from lumps of gluey looking batter into these cute, crisp little puff balls.

Then the next day rolled around. I was cool, calm and collected, filling my choux with pastry creme and dissolving sugar for my first pot of hard caramel glaze. Then it all went a bit pear-shaped. It didn't take long to get my first painful sugar burn while dipping those little choux into the caramel. After that I was wayyy too frazzled to care about how the damn thing looked. It started looking wonky, and the caramel was messily distributed over the choux, but I didn't care! I just wanted to get the thing finished so I could nurse my blisters. So I crankily rushed and finished it, practically threw some silver cachous on top, couldn't be bothered doing any spun sugar and flung a ribbon on it. Not made with love. But it tasted good. And it kind of looks like a cupcakebouche...I guess? Just not quite as pretty as I'd originally envisaged. And in the end, it was worth the 5 or so blisters I got, because it was a real challenge, it was new and it was fun. Next time, (not that I really think there will be a next time), I will remember to dip all my choux with the same amount of toffee so they look more uniform.

Raspberry & Chocolate Cupcake Croquembouche
(based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri)
For the pâte à choux (Yield: About 28, or 40 smaller ones)
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.

Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly. Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny. As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes.It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs. As I added the last egg, I added about 3 tsp cocoa powder to one batch of batter, and made another batch with pink food colouring added (for the ones that would later be filled with raspberry pastry creams).

Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets (mine were closer to 3/4 inch). Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.
Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top. Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool. Can be stored in a airtight box overnight.

For the crème patissiere (Half Batch)
1 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
6 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. (30 g.) unsalted butter
1 Tsp. Vanilla
For the chocolate pastry cream: 1/4 cup milk + 80g semisweet chocolate
For the raspberry pastry cream: 1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries - pureed and strained

If doing chocolate pastry cream: bring milk to the boil in a small pan, remove from the heat and stir in chocolate until completely melted and combined. Set aside to cool.

Dissolve cornstarch in 1/4 cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat. Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook. Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter, vanilla, and chocolate mixture (if making chocolate pastry cream) or raspberry puree (if making raspberry pastry cream). Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze.

For the hard caramel glaze:
1 cup (225 g.) sugar
½ teaspoon lemon juice

Combine sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan with a metal kitchen spoon stirring until the sugar resembles wet sand. Place on medium heat; heat without stirring until sugar starts to melt around the sides of the pan and the center begins to smoke. Begin to stir sugar. Continue heating, stirring occasionally until the sugar is a clear, amber color. Remove from heat immediately; place bottom of pan in ice water to stop the cooking. Use immediately. Use the chocolate choux for the base of your 'cupcake' and the raspberry choux for the top. Decorate with sprinkles, cachous and ribbons. (Hopefully a little neater than I did) Thanks to Cat for this extremely fun challenge!

Apple Pie Tiramisu, Daring Bakers Feb 2010

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

I know some of you might be completely mortified by how much I've strayed from the traditional tiramisu here. As soon as I saw what the challenge was going to be this month I thought about making a lovely traditional tiramisu (a dessert which I love), but I could make a regular old tiramisu any day of the year, and this was for Daring Bakers! I had to go a little crazy.

I tossed up several ideas, but time and money constraints reined me in. I thought about doing a dark chocolate and raspberry tiramisu with butterscotch schnapps, or a strawberry margarita tiramisu with lime juice and tequila soaked ladyfingers and strawberry mascarpone served in a cocktail glass with a sugar/salt crusted rim. But I was determined to get this dessert prepared for our annual family Chinese New Year's Ever dinner...and this recipe really does require a whole lot of prep. So I kept it simple. But tasty. Apple pie and tiramisu, two favourites, two classics....together in one dessert, by using apples cooked until tender with butter, sugar & cinnamon, and a sprinkling of apple pie crust on top. And all of us were really surprised by how tasty it was in the end.

I usually hate recipes that require this many separate elements and so much prep and chilling time. I like things you can bung in the oven once and be done with. It seemed like a huge shame to make this beautiful zabaglione and then mix it up with all these other creamy things so it was lost amongst it all. But then I made it, and it was soooooo good. For those of you who are tiramisu purists, I don't blame you. But try not to think of this adaptation as ruining a classic, and more that it is taking inspiration and creating something fun and new.

I really enjoyed the flavours and textures, with the soft, sweet ladyfingers that had the lovely scent of brandy, the beautifully smooth and creamy mixture, cinnamon flavoured apple pie mixture and the crunch of the crumble. I might make this again, but hugely cut down the prep time by only using bought mascarpone and cream for the mixture and buying lady finger biscuits.

The mascarpone was easy to make, I've made ricotta before but the mascarpone was a little different. It only thickens when it curdles, so it's not completely obvious that anything has happened after you add the lemon juice. But after chilling it overnight it was lovely, creamy and smooth. The sponge fingers turned out exactly like I imagined, soft and fluffy with a crisp outer layer. The apple pie filling and cinnamon crumble are dead easy to make, and I also used this as an opportunity to finally use our fancy fruit juicer that can take whole apples!

I made two versions of this dessert, as individual sized portions in these amazing glasses. A's Mum brought them back as a present from their trip to Thailand, they have pointy bottoms so they roll around like spinning tops, which looks cool but turned out to be a pain to keep still for photos, haha! I also made a larger one with the leftover ingredients in a loaf tin that was line with cling film so that I could lift it out after freezing it and slice up. It froze beautifully and you could clearly see all the neat layers of sponge, apples and cream. It even tasted great and was really smooth while it was still frozen, like a semifreddo. But I still preferred the individual portions the best, it was the easiest to eat and the prettiest to look at. And the perfect, light way to top off a very heavy meal.

Apple Pie Tiramisu
To assemble the Apple Pie Tiramisu:
Zabaglione
Vanilla Pastry Cream
Whipped Cream
2 cups/470ml fresh apple juice
1/2 cup brandy
750g granny smith apples, peeled, cored and diced
1/2 cup caster sugar
30g butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 cup/75gms mascarpone cheese (Vera's recipe)
36 savoiardi/ ladyfinger biscuits (you may use less) (Check Aparna or Deeba's challenge posts for the recipe, when they get posted)

For the crumble:
85g self raising
60g sugar
30 butter
1 tbsp water for mixing
ground cinnamon

Placed diced apples and butter in a medium saucepan and add sugar and cinnamon. Stirring regularly, cook apples on medium heat until tender and golden. Remove from heat and cool completely. (Can be done the night before and kept in the fridge)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Place butter, flour and sugar in a bowl and rub the mixture between your fingertips to combine them. Lift the mixture up high with your hands and let it fall so it traps a bit of air. Add about 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon, then gradually add a 1/2 tablespoon of water at a time, while still combining mixture with your fingertips until it starts to clump together in nice crumbly pieces. Spread in an even layer on a lined baking tray and bake until golden, fluffing regularly with a fork. If the bits of crumble are stuck together after removing from the oven, allow to cool completely and then break up using your fingers. Can be stored in an air-tight container until ready to serve.

Have ready a rectangular serving dish (about 8" by 8" should do) or one of your choice. I prefer using individual serving glasses.
Mix together the apple juice and brandy in a shallow dish, whisking to mix well. Set aside to cool.
In a large bowl, beat the mascarpone cheese with a spoon to break down the lumps and make it smooth. This will make it easier to fold. Add the prepared and chilled zabaglione and pastry cream, blending until just combined. Gently fold in the whipped cream. Set this cream mixture aside.

Now to start assembling the tiramisu. I first used cookie cutters to give each of my round ladyfingers a neat edge, so that it fit well against the side of my serving glasses. Working quickly, dip 12 of the ladyfingers (or one disc at a time if making individual glasses) in the apple juice mixture, about 1 second per side. They should be moist but not soggy. Immediately transfer each ladyfinger to the platter, placing them side by side in a single row. You may break a lady finger into two, if necessary, to ensure the base of your dish is completely covered.

Spoon a single layer of cooked apple mixture on top of the ladyfingers. Cove this with one-third of the cream mixture (about two table spoons for an individual dish) , then use a rubber spatula or spreading knife to cover the top evenly, all the way to the edges. Repeat to create 2 more layers, using 12 ladyfingers and the cream mixture for each layer. (I only had enough to create two layers) Clean any spilled cream mixture; cover carefully with plastic wrap and refrigerate the tiramisu overnight. (I froze my larger tiramisu to make it easier to slice up into portions before defrosting in the refrigerator)

To serve, carefully remove the plastic wrap and sprinkle the tiramisu with cinnamon crumble. Cut into individual portions (or keep in individual glasses) and serve.

Many thanks to Aparna and Deeba for being lovely hosts this month and selecting an awesome challenge recipe!

Nanaimo Pops - Daring Bakers Jan 2010

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

I seem to be suffering from baker's block at the moment. Perhaps it's a hangover from all the crazy Christmas baking, but I've been feeling too tired to bake. And it's been hot enough in Sydney recently that the absolute last thing that I felt like doing was turning the oven on. So I was slightly relieved to hear what this month's challenge would be, especially after the insanity of last month. I hadn't really heard of Nanaimo bars before this, so I decided to keep it simple and try out the recipe without too much tampering.

It was quite a straight-forward recipe, unfortunately I left it to the last minute and had to use what was available so I did not make the gluten-free version of the Graham wafers. I was really looking forward to making them since I've seen them in so many of the slices and cheesecake recipes where I've had to replace it with Digestive biscuits. The Graham wafers were delicious, I loved the light flavour the honey gave them, and they tasted nothing like digestives.

I thought it might be fun to serve the Nanaimo bar on lollipop sticks, like a cake pop. I ended up settling for popsicle sticks, which was probably better since I made them quite large and they needed a thick stick to hold on to. I was a little disappointed with how my Nanaimo pops turned out, but I should have known I was headed for disaster, because anything that is chocolate covered is going to end up a big fat mess if I'm the one doing it. I forgot to chill my pops before taking photos, but they firmed up nicely in the fridge afterwards. I still wish they were a little bit neater, but they were fun to dip into warm milk.

While I adored the Graham wafers, I'm a little unsure if this is one of my favourite slices. The middle layer had a lot of custard powder in it, which has quite a strong flavour. I don't tend to use custard powder for anything other than biscuits, so I wasn't used to the flavour of it. It also seemed such a shame to crush up those lovely tasting biscuits into the base where you couldn't taste it anymore! I also replaced the almonds in the base with cornflakes, due to allergies, which worked quite nicely. It reminded me of afghan cookies, which I have had a major craving for recently.

For Gluten-Free Graham Wafers
Ingredients:
1 cup (138 g) (4.9 ounces) Sweet rice flour (also known as glutinous rice flour)
3/4 cup (100 g) (3.5 ounces) Tapioca Starch/Flour
1/2 cup (65 g) (2.3 ounces) Sorghum Flour (I replaced all three flours with plain flour)
1 cup (200 g) (7.1 ounces) Dark Brown Sugar, Lightly packed
1 teaspoon (5 mL) Baking soda
3/4 teaspoon (4 mL ) Kosher Salt
7 tablespoons (100 g) (3 ½ ounces) Unsalted Butter (Cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen)
1/3 cup (80 mL) Honey, Mild-flavoured such as clover.
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Whole Milk
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Pure Vanilla Extract

Directions:
1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, combine the flours, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Pulse on low to incorporate. Add the butter and pulse on and off, until the mixture is the consistency of a coarse meal. If making by hand, combine aforementioned dry ingredients with a whisk, then cut in butter until you have a coarse meal. No chunks of butter should be visible.

Milk, honey & vanilla (The geek in me was reminded of physiology labs when I saw this)

2. In a small bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk together the honey, milk and vanilla. Add to the flour mixture until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.
3. Turn the dough onto a surface well-floured with sweet rice flour and pat the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic and chill until firm, about 2 hours, or overnight.

4. Divide the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator. Sift an even layer of sweet rice flour onto the work surface and roll the dough into a long rectangle, about 1/8 inch thick. The dough will be quite sticky, so flour as necessary. Cut into 4 by 4 inch squares. Gather the scraps together and set aside. Place wafers on one or two parchment-lined baking sheets. Chill until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes. Repeat with the second batch of dough.
5. Adjust the rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).
6. Gather the scraps together into a ball, chill until firm, and reroll. Dust the surface with more sweet rice flour and roll out the dough to get a couple more wafers.

7. Prick the wafers with toothpick or fork, not all the way through, in two or more rows.
8. Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the touch, rotating sheets halfway through to ensure even baking. Might take less, and the starting location of each sheet may determine its required time. The ones that started on the bottom browned faster.

9. When cooled completely, place enough wafers in food processor to make 1 ¼ cups (300 mL) of crumbs. Another way to do this is to place in a large ziplock bag, forceforce all air out and smash with a rolling pin until wafers are crumbs.

Nanaimo Bars
Ingredients:
Bottom Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
1/4 cup (50 g) (1.8 ounces) Granulated Sugar
5 tablespoons (75 mL) Unsweetened Cocoa
1 Large Egg, Beaten
1 1/4 cups (300 mL) (160 g) (5.6 ounces) Gluten Free Graham Wafer Crumbs (See previous recipe)
1/2 cup (55 g) (1.9 ounces) Almonds (Any type, Finely chopped) (I replaced this with an equal amount of slightly crushed cornflakes
1 cup (130 g) (4.5 ounces) Coconut (Shredded, sweetened or unsweetened)

Middle Layer
1/2 cup (115 g) (4 ounces) Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons (40 mL) Heavy Cream
2 tablespoons (30 mL) Vanilla Custard Powder (Such as Bird’s. Vanilla pudding mix may be substituted.)
2 cups (254 g) (8.9 ounces) Icing Sugar

Top Layer
4 ounces (115 g) Semi-sweet chocolate
2 tablespoons (28 g) (1 ounce) Unsalted Butter

Directions:
1. For bottom Layer: Melt unsalted butter, sugar and cocoa in top of a double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, nuts and coconut. Press firmly into an ungreased 8 by 8 inch pan.

For the pops, I pressed them into heart shapes using a cookie cutter, and then pressed them firmly into the tops of the popsicle sticks.

2. For Middle Layer: Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light in colour. Spread over bottom layer.

3. For Top Layer: Melt chocolate and unsalted butter over low heat. Cool. Once cool, pour over middle layer and chill.

I placed my pops over a wire racks so any excess chocolate could drip off. After chilled, serve with hot tea or warm milk...or whatever you feel like! Thanks to Lauren for this month's challenge, I'm going to go munch on some Graham wafers now!

Gingerbread Igloo - Daring Bakers Dec 2009

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

When I saw that the challenge for December was Gingerbread Houses I had two immediate thoughts. The first was, "What a fabulous Christmas challenge!" and the second was something along the lines of "BAHHH!!!" because I had JUST finished making my very simple, children-friendly mini gingerbread houses. A lot of my friends urged me to just save my mini houses and present them as my completed challenge for this month, but that didn't feel right. The whole point of those mini ones was their simplicity, and there was no challenge there for me. I wanted to be more daring! So I decided to have a little fun...

I struggled for the first week deciding what to do. I have mentioned time and time again that I am a messy baker, so I knew that I couldn't expect myself to come up with a delicate masterpiece or anything. Then Asian Gaga semi-jokingly said to me 'Make a gingerbread igloo!', to which I paused and then replied 'YOU ARE A GENIUS!'.

Now, I could have gone the lazy, more sane way about this and just done a whole piece of gingerbread moulded around a bowl. But where is the fun in that?! I was going to really make an igloo. From scratch. From blocks of gingerbread rather than blocks of ice. And it was going to work dammit! AND there would be little gingerbread eskimos! With furry collars! On sleighs!

My friends looked at me like I was crazy. They couldn't understand why I would attempt something so messy if I was already such a messy baker. But that's part of the fun of being a Daring Baker right? To challenge yourself to do something you wouldn't have done otherwise? So I plowed on with my plans, and though they weren't very well formed, I started. I used Y's recipe for the gingerbread, but I had a few issues with it at first. I think I must have added wayyyy too much flour, because the dough was super dry and wouldn't come together at all, but I've been in that situation enough that I didn't panic, and just kept adding water until it came together. I also split it up into about 5 separate portions, to make it easier to work with my hands and get the right amount of moisture in the dough. Even so, after being in the fridge overnight, the dough was like a rock, so I took it out and let it soften for a few hours before I started to work with it.

The dough wasn't too friendly to me, the scraps didn't take well to being re-rolled and so a lot of my little gingerbread tiles for the igloo had ugly cracks in them. But I wasn't too fussed, I'm not a perfectionist. Overall, the very firm gingerbread made it easier to carve into nice pieces that fit into the igloo, without having to worry about it crumbling. I did make the big mistake of leaving big gaps at the front, making it much messier-looking than the back, because I assumed I would be covering it up with the front 'tunnel' entrance. I stupidly did not think about the fact that the tunnel entrance would only go so high, so that is why it looks all wonky right above the entrance.

Y's Recipe:
Scandinavian Gingerbread (Pepparkakstuga)
(from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas)
1 cup butter, room temperature [226g]
1 cup brown sugar, well packed [220g]
2 tablespoons cinnamon
4 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ cup boiling water
5 cups all-purpose flour [875g]
(See end of post)
Royal Icing:
1 large egg white
2 cups icing sugar

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until blended. Add the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the baking soda with the boiling water and add to the dough along with the flour. Mix to make a stiff dough. If necessary add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Chill 2 hours or overnight. (I had to add about 5 extra tablespoons of water, and even so the dough was still very stiff the next day)

2. Cut patterns for the house, making patterns for the roof, front walls, gabled walls, chimney and door out of cardboard. (I didn't need to do this)

3. Roll the dough out on a large, ungreased baking sheet and place the patterns on the dough. Mark off the various pieces with a knife, but leave the pieces in place. (I didn't need to do this either)

4. I rolled out the dough on a floured bench, roughly 1 cm thick (which allows for fact that the dough puffs a little when baked), cut required shapes and transferred these to the baking sheet. Any scraps I saved and rerolled at the end. (I used a ruler to cut rows of 2cm x 3cm blocks)

5. Preheat the oven to 375'F (190'C). Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the cookie dough feels firm. After baking, again place the pattern on top of the gingerbread and trim the shapes, cutting the edges with a straight-edged knife. (I trimmed a few bricks to have edgest slanting inwards, to make it easier to fit them together as they started to curve inwards close to the top of the igloo) Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

Now, you can build up your igloo around a foil covered bowl if it makes it easier for you, but I only used the bowl to get a good idea of how many gingerbread tiles I would need to construct my igloo. Once I had the right size for my base, I removed the bowl because I was scared of it getting stuck to the royal icing and all kinds of drama trying to lift the igloo off the bowl later.

Beat egg white with an electric beater until soft peaks form and then gradually add the icing sugar. Put mixture in a piping bag and pipe royal icing along the edges of some gingerbread bricks and stick them together to form the base. Leave to dry until it is just set.

Pipe royal icing on one edge and the bottom of your tiles, and slowly build up your igloo, curving the tiles more inwards the higher it gets. Closer to the top it will be harder to make your tiles sit at the correct angle while the icing is still well, so I used a wooden skewer as a strut to hold it in place until the icing set. The more it angles inwards, the more you will need to alternate regular tiles with those that you have carved with the angled sides earlier. Any gaps are easily filled with more icing. When it gets to the top, it should be almost angled parallel to the floor you won't be able to fit another layer of bricks in. Cut a circle of gingerbread from the remaining dough that will fit in nicely at the top, bake and then cement in using royal icing.

To make the door, just glue together several pieces in an arch at the base of the igloo. You don't need to leave a gap for the entrance on the main part of the igloo if you don't want to. I actually removed a brick from the base after I decided where my entrance was going to be, which was risky!

Use the remaining gingerbread dough (there should be a bit less than half left) to cut out extra decorations for your igloo. I cut out some reindeer...

So that they could pull a sleigh which I built out of mini candy canes and some pieces of gingerbread. I tried to curve up one end of the base of the sleigh by baking it against the side of a baking tray but it wasn't very obvious once it came out of the oven.

I also cut out gingerbread men which I decorated with 'frilly' royal icing to make a fur coat, easily done using a small star tip on my piping bag, black food colouring for the face and I added some of the black to the royal icing for the body so they could have cute little grey outfits :D

I also added a couple extra bits, a sugar wreath for the entrance (which you might recognise from the mini gingerbread houses) and a gingerbread christmas tree decorated with green and white royal icing. I wish I had saved some of my christmas tree cupcakes to decorate this with!

I served it on a cake platter dusted with lots of icing sugar, which makes the perfect snowy setting, and even better if you accidently leave tracks in the 'snow' to make it look like footprints!

Thank you so much to Anna and Y for picking this wonderfully fun challenge for this month. I was so tired after constructing my igloo that I got really lazy with decorating it for the photos, so it's a fair bit uglier than I wanted. I wish I could redo it and move the entrance to the other side of the igloo where I had tiled the gingerbread much more neatly! But you get the general idea of what I was going for, right? :) Merry Christmas everyone!

P.S. For those who are wondering, I don't think I'll be eating it! I definitely should have added more water or butter to the dough, because it's very very dry and does not make great eating unfortunately :( But you might have better luck with the recipe than I did. However if you do want a gingerbread that I would definitely eat you can try the recipe for my other gingerbread houses!