Gingerbread Nativity Scene

Gingerbread Nativity Scene: Xmas 2011

This year, we decided to make our gingerbread house early,  using our traditional gingerbread house recipe. The reason for an early start was the heat and, more importantly, humidity of a KwaZulu-Natal summer. We've had an unbelievable amount of rain over the last while - three times the yearly average for November, for instance, a result of the La Niña, or anti-El Niño effect; i.e., this year we have a particularly wet, as opposed to dry, season. The effect it has on gingerbread houses is deleterious in the extreme; they literally 'melt' on you. Hence we treated our panels of the house (or, in this instance, the nativity scene the kids wanted to make) as we would a rusk, by double-baking it. However, we thought that we would be clever and make multiple panels, stuck together by royal icing. The theory was that, in the same way that cement is harder than the bricks it binds together, so the royal icing would keep the gingerbread house which is wont to go wonky in this weather, together. What I did not factor in was the 48 hours the royal icing needed to dry, each side. Sigh -

Gingerbread Nativity Scene with Marzipan and Fondant Modelling

The other problem with the multiple panels is, of course, that it is hard to cobble together with any degree of rigour, and hence our scene became very much a stage scene, though the buttresses used on the back we tried to keep pretty too:

Royal Icing buttresses up the planks and the buttress

However, the size of the nativity stage was predicated upon our modelling of the figures and I figured that a Mexican-style Nativity scene would serve us very well, partly because their works are so colourful, and mainly because it is easier to create a naive/naif work than it is a professional one. Particularly if rolled fondant or gum-paste, and marvellous marzipan modelling comprise your base material; and especially so given the obvious constraint of the humid weather, which serves to soften the fondant and marzipan too. 

Marzipan Nativity figures, fondant cloaks, coloured coconut grass

We started modelling the figures, on the basis that it is easier to build a house with the figures already made. The bodies consist of a sausage made out of marvellous marzipan modelling paste and the heads are balls of the same. The hair was created by pressing the marzipan through a garlic press, bought especially for the purpose. The cloaks, which need to have a greater degree of stability, are made out of rolled fondant, which I have converted into a gum-paste, really, by means of judicious amounts of gum tragacanth, gum tex, dyocell, gum arabic, gum-paste or CMC - take your pick, they all do fundamentally the same thing. 

White cloak with multi-coloured flowers, hearts and butterlies 

 The boys and I spent the first evening colouring small bits of fondant and then using a variety of cutters to make the butterfly, flower and heart shapes, which we then pressed into the rolled out fondant, white in the case of Mary's cloak:

Joseph's cloak is brown, with leaves

We used the gel paste to make Joseph's cloak brown, and then pressed in a variety of leaf shapes into his cloak.

For the gingerbread houses, I try to operate on the premiss that the kids must be involved; not easy if you are a bit of a perfectionist in the kitchen. That is why a naif scene is best for all concerned.

My daughter, Bethany, greatly impressed us all by undertaking to make both the cow and the little sheep (plus baby) all by herself, using the marzipan modelling paste.

Marzipan sheep and lamb

Of course, as a good South African girl-child, she would make her cattle Nguni:

Marzipan Nguni cow

So there we have it, a nativity scene in the making:

Do not forget the logs, made out of chocolate

But the best of all, is the eating thereof:

Yum!

Have fun with your gingerbread houses this Xmas, and please do send me pictures of your efforts; I'd love to share them.