Gingerbread Follies

On Monday night we planned on meeting up with Rok & Narine and making gingerbread houses. I was really excited because Narine was going to make dessert and I was going to bring the houses for us to make. With a busy day at work, I rushed home and on our way over to our house I ran into Michael's and bought three kits. When we got to their house, we opened the kits to find that they were the accessory kits to the gingerbread houses-- the ones where you melt the chocolates for the windows and trees and stuff. It wasn't even the right stuff! But it all worked out because Narine had made these amazing desserts and we couldn't pass up trying them out, right? :) So we had dessert and planned to make the houses later the week. Narine is the one who helped me get the desserts ready for the Halloween party, and no joke, she is the most creative food person I have ever met. She hand made these beautiful peanut butter icecream and coconut snowmen... which were not only the most adorable dessert I have eaten, but also were delicious. For the snowmen hats, she made these round cookies and then blow-torched marshmallows onto them giving a weathered hat look... I wasn't kidding when I said she was creative. Cut gumdrops were used for the nose and chocolates for the eyes.

She also made this amazing chocolate silk pie-- where she handmade the chocolate crust using a food processor and then also used the torch on the meringue on top. Russ was in heaven--- you can see it on his face.

Since the houses were out for the night-- unless we just wanted to make chocolate trees and windows, we decided to meet up on Thursday to finish the activity. I went back to Michaels, and guess what? They were all out of gingerbread house kits. So I tried Costco, which was also all out. So I sent Russ to Target and he found these really cool mini gingerbread villages. They looked pretty easy, but man were they hard! The little houses were so much more work than a large one.. but they turned out so cute! Here are some pictures.

Here I am starting on the houses...

Here's Russ coming to terrorize the village instead of help build it. He pretend to throw some sprinkles on... but that was about it.

I think Rok actually put some of the sprinkles on... so I guess he went one step farther than Russ.

Having way too much fun!

Narine and here finished village.

My finished village.

Um...yum!!! Did they ever smell good. Here's me ready to plunder and eat my village whole.

Yeah, the boys really didn't help with the ginger bread houses at all... this is what they did end up doing... along with a car meet at the In-N-Out. But they didn't complain, they loved the video games and cars... and we girls loved the gingerbread houses... so no complaints on either side! :)