Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Gingerbread houses and other stuff, too

Happy new year! Maybe in 2011 I will make some things that are actually healthy, but I spent December making sweets, sweets and more sweets.

But first things first, Whaz in da bag???



This is my sister's dog, Remy.


Ok, so gingerbread houses are nice. For the dough, I used Mark Bittman's recipe for gingersnaps, which are delicious, but I added some finely ground black pepper and a pinch of cayenne to make it extra-spicy. For icing, I melted some corn syrup with confectioners' sugar until it made a thick paste, and used a spoon to drip the "glue" wherever i needed it. The results were very messy, but I like to think that adds charm.I had some dough left over, which I shaped into balls and rolled in sugar for some sparkly gingerbread cookies. I guess if I wanted to be really ambitious, I could have made gingerbread people like I did last year, but they still tasted good!

Another thing that had been bothering me was a complete lack of non-marshmallow rice crispy treats in my life, as I was having a bit of a jonesing for them. I found a recipe on VegWeb.com that was really fantastically easy, and which turned out great. I doubled the vanilla, and I didn't regret it. Let them cool for a couple of hours before you cut into them to get neat little squares. If you felt like mixing in some chocolate chips or something in there, that would be ok, too, but I like them plain. And if corn syrup freaks you out, use brown rice syrup instead. Yummeh!




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