It's a Gingerbread Wonderland

If being a gingerbread house developer is already a holiday ritual for your family and you're looking for some fresh ideas, or if this is the year when you plan on making your first gingerbread creation, Mimi Sinclair's Gingerbread Wonderland: 30 Magical Houses, Cookies, and Cakes (Kyle Books © 2016, photography by Tara Fisher © 2016, 112 pages, hardcover with color photographs, $14.95) is a new, sweet, and expert guide.

This diminutive volume, with all the charm of a Country Cottage, begins with two basic and versatile gingerbread doughs -- light and dark.  Then there is a collection of classic and contemporary ideas for what to do with the doughs (Hanging Cookies, Gingerbread Family, Russian Dolls, Townhouse, Hansel & Gretel House, plus wreaths, garlands, cookie trees, and more), recipes for non-cookie but grown-up ginger desserts, like the Gingerbread Layer Cake shown here, and really useful templates, tips, and tricks to make you a master builder.

I like that there are photographs of every recipe; this is really useful when you need a visual template as much as a structural one.  And the book is affordable enough that you can buy it now and only use it once a year, at every Christmas to come, without any guilt.  It also would make a great pre-Christmas hostess/host gift, paired with a selection of cookie cutters.

We've been given permission to share Mima Sinclair's superb recipe for her Light and Dark Gingerbread Doughs, plus instructions for using the Dark Dough  to make very witty Rudolph Cookies. 

Maybe this is the year to start a new tradition to make gingerbread a regular part of your holiday fun.  Merry Christmas!