too. much. sugar.

Today I spent a lovely day shopping with my beautiful friend Anna, and afterwards we made the rather adventurous (and, in hindsight, probably mistaken) decision to attempt to build a gingerbread house. I was buzzing with inspiration from an absolutely incredible party spread, courtesy of Bakerella, whose cake pops are quite possibly the cutest edible thing on the planet:

Bakerella’s post on a Christmas Party she attended reminded me of some sort of fairytale Willy Wonka-style confectionery dreamworld. Heaven.

However, our venture wasn’t quite so successful. First of all, we ate too much of the dough, so had to make an extra batch. WHAT a shame. Secondly, we baked the gingerbread in massive slabs without thinking of the house’s dimensions, so we ended up having to cut the pieces to size.

Yes, Anna is holding a knife and a ruler here. We were getting rather desperate by this point.

Unfortunately, neither of us are particularly mathematically-minded, so our geometrical endeavours weren’t quite as precise as we’d have hoped. Despite plentiful remedial work in the form of copious amounts of icing in an effort to cement the walls together, the house came tumbling down before our very eyes.

So near…

…and yet so far.

By this point, Anna’s kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it, we were surrounded by scraps of gingerbread, covered in gluey icing, and left at a loss regarding where to go next. Having bought bags upon bags of sweets to decorate the house, we resolved to cover the gingerbread remnants in icing and cover them in the sweets. Perhaps not the prettiest of houses, and definitely not the sturdiest place to live, but certainly awfully scrummy.

Unfortunately I’m now buzzing on a sugar high and my hands are shaking as I type. Nevertheless, it was jolly well worth it…although some savoury cheese wouldn’t go amiss right now.