Birthday Gingerbread Christmas Tree

Today is my best friend's birthday (Happy birthday, Best Friend!). Instead of requesting her usual German Chocolate Cake, though, she requested a gingerbread house. I was really excited about this because gingerbread houses are a tradition in my family, but I have never been the one to make the gingerbread or the pieces to the house. I started looking for templates and found one just in time for my friend to change her mind about what she wanted. She sent me this link and told me she wanted a gingerbread Christmas tree. No problem, right?

I was super excited to try this out! I used Cardamommy's gingerbread recipe (which came together absolutely beautifully) and while it was chilling, I drew and cut out all the patterns (yep, I made every single pattern I used for this) and planned more or less what I hoped it would look like. When all the pieces were baked, I started to assemble them. As it came together I got more and more excited because it was looking so good. Then it came to the icing part. I really didn't want to mess it up with this stage of the project. Being a college student, I don't have a lot of kitchen tools. Such as an icing kit. So I improvised by snipping jagged edges off the tip of a bag in order to get a textured pipe. Fortunately, my little contraptions all worked out for me and soon I was icing like crazy. For the sake of time and lack of equipment, I did not try Cardamommy's icing recipe. Rather, I simply snagged some vanilla icing from my dear friend Betty Crocker. I soon found it to be extremely soft, so i added some powdered sugar to make it a little sturdier. This was really helpful for the icicles because the original frosting was so soft it all sort of dropped off, giving me a melty effect rather than a frozen one. The resmaining frosting was  mixed with some food dye to provide clothing for our poor (previously) naked gingerbread couple or swooped around on the plate in order to create a drift-like effect. When I was finished I sprinkled my little scene ever so slightly with powdered sugar for some fresh snow.

I'm pretty proud and impressed with myself, actually. For having no cookie cutters, patterns, icing kits, mixers, etc etc and for it being the first time around, I'd say I didn't do too badly. I have to warn you, though. If you decide to do it this way, be prepared to spend 8 hours doing everything. This is coming from my very much fatigued brain (which is wondering why I'm still up at 4:25AM).

Hopefully this all makes sense. The real point, though, is to wish my absolutely wonderful and very best friend a very very happy birthday!

Love,

Coriaunty

PS--If want my pattern for the tree with specific instructions, email cardamommyandcoriaunty@gmail.com