Christmas Gingerbread House.

As we were getting ready for Thanksgiving this year, I found the gingerbread house mold I was given years ago, but only used once to make a chocolate house. We decided that we'd actually make the gingerbread house this year. Here it is in front of our Christmas tree (the first we've had in three years, mainly because we had been travelling for Christmas until this year). The gingerbread itself is quite strong and crisp, with no leavening at all, but tastes really good, like a molasses gingersnap.

Unfortunately, I forgot to mention the "molasses" part to Dan, who was part of the group that came over on Saturday for a little get-together. Molasses makes Dan's mouth tingle, apparently some kind of food sensitivity, and he tried one of the cookies. He knew immediately that it had a lot of molasses in it (organic molasses, of course), so stopped after biting off the head of the gingerbread man. He said it was probably OK, but had a couple of other things to clear the molasses out as a precaution.

The "smoke" rising from the chimney is a pair of meringue cookies put together with the same frosting that was used to assemble and decorate the house.