Who is Santa?

You better watch out

You better not cry

Better not pout

I´m telling you why

Santa Claus is coming to town

He´s making a list

And checking it twice

He´s gonna find out who´s naughty and nice

Santa Claus is coming to town

Actually Santa is already at my house. I guess he just wanted to peek over my shoulder as I was baking this gingerbread house and probably he also wanted a bite of it. 

Guess who he is!

a) the real Santa!!! The one and only! WOW!

b) one of his elves trying to take advantage of his boss´s privileges

c) my silly brother with his silly xmas pyjamas 

If you want to try and make a gingerbread house all on your own from scratch I can recommend two recipes. I usually follow this recipe from Taste.com because it´s very simple and there are fewer ingredients compared to other recipes, but I also like the one of the Hummingbird Bakery in London (by the way I have both their cook books and they are full of amazing recipes! I really recommend them). If you only feel like having fun decorating you can also buy prepared gingerbread dough; it´s easy to find around this time of the year.

For the decorations I use royal icing and anything sweet and colourful I have in my kitchen, such as gumdrops, dragees, sprinkles, sugar pearls, jimmies, hearts, stars, and so on.

For the icing I don´t follow a particular recipe. I simply take a bowl, pour some icing sugar in it, a little little little bit of water and a couple of drops of lemon juice. Then I stir and according to the consistency of it I either add water or sugar. It doesn´t have too bee too thick nor too liquid otherwise the decorations won´t stick and your house will not glue together.

If you do everything right you will have so much fun and the result will surely be cool!

Enjoy ♥

Martina

P.S.: dear Anja, Sandra, and Kristi (giveaway winners) your personalised canvases are finished! Your parcels are also ready for shipping; I am going to the post office tomorrow morning. Congratulations again, have fun!