A breakdown of my first ever gingerbread house bar! 😀
Its a beautiful rainy weekend, so I thought I would take this opportunity to post a bit of a breakdown of the bar from my Australia Day post.
My ideas for the bar... yep, I have really limited sketching skills ! 😉
When I’m putting together something that I haven’t done before, I always try and get my ideas onto paper. My sketches are pretty crude, but by scribbling it down, I get all my ideas out & start to work out the individual aspects of the project. I try and put as much detail into my plans as possible, even though it may not be physically possible to achieve the things I imagine. I won’t post pics of these cringe worthy sketches generally, but for this project I was doing something completely new to me, so I wanted to show what I was thinking, and how close I got to creating it.
Instead of making a cake or cupcakes this year, I thought I would do something a bit different. I took this opportunity to work with gingerbread for the first time. Knowing my own limitations, I decided on a basic design for the structure, and took a general gingerbread house template, adjusting it to suit an outdoor bar shape.
The basic bar on the board, starting to get decorated....
In hindsight I stuffed up the thickness of the gingerbread. It was a bit too thick and bulky, so the finish wasn’t as nice as I wanted. In saying that, it was super easy to work with. I got it all stuck together with royal icing without any dramas. Once it had dried, I melted some dark chocolate and painted the walls, trying to give it the texture and look of very rough wood. The roof I covered with a thin layer of grey royal icing, which I then scrapped off with a little zester, creating great tin roof looking ridges. Once that had dried I roughly painted over the top of the ridges with silver paint, to finish.
A side view of the bar, with the completed windmill... mounted on a pin so that I could spin it (very very gently), YAY!
There was a week spent making decorations out of gum paste to bring this together. I previously posted the frustration of trying to create a windmill. I also made up some little crabs, a water tank, some bunting for the sides of the roof, a radio (necessary for listening to the hottest 100), the bartender & his dog, and some other little bits and pieces to bring it together.
Rusty the cattle dog!
To cover the cake board, I really wanted to get a red dirt look. Its one of those spectacular things about the outback, although I have to admit, the most I have seen it is in Childers. Its such a gorgeous colour! To replicate this I covered the board in fondant coloured with red & purple to a really dark hue. I then dusted the whole board with cocoa powder & crumbled some extra gingerbread over it.
With the bar done & the board ready, it was just time for assembly. 😀
Bazza the bartender welcomes you to the outdoor bar!
This was a wonderfully challenging project. With heaps of little things to make that were all new to me, and fiddly in there own right. I had so much fun figuring out the little pieces. And in the end, I was pretty happy with the result. I wonder what kind of theme I can use for my next gingerbread creation? But that’s enough of my rambling for now.
Thanks for stopping by, I’m off to pick mangos in the rain ~ fun, fun!! Hope your enjoying your weekend too!
A view from the back of the bar.
a kitty and her cakes 