I’m all about looking at the positive in every situation (even though I’m cynical – how can that be?) and that’s exactly what I had to do with this experiment. The goal was a ginger bread house made out of flax crackers held together with a peppermint coconut butter dip. Having never made a gingerbread house before – I mentally devised how I would construct the house and what adornments to include. I knew one thing for sure this house would be eaten almost immediately after making and taking pictures, it would not be one to collect dust or marvel at all its preserve-ity goodness badness. Nope. This is how it went down.

The crackers turned out good but not really the right shape which became part of the problem. I had planned for uniform size but not the waviness. The waviness completely slipped my mind and I didn’t have enough mesh sheets for the job anyway. Normally you can avoid the ripples by placing one of your mesh sheets on top of your cracker after they’ve been flipped – this helps press them down and keep them flatter.

Then there was a problem with the ‘caulk’ of choice. I thought coconut butter would work out good because it hardens at room temperature. Then thought it would be yummy to add peppermint extract. The melted texture stayed true as I added the extract and coconut oil but when I added room temperature agave the ‘caulk’ became fluffy instead of liquid. I stirred all of this by hand and I do wonder if it would have been a little bit better if I used my personal blender instead.

Next, I placed the mixture in a piping bag with a wide tip. It worked great for the first minute, then oil started soaking out the sides of the bag, dripping everywhere – the beginning of my emotional unraveling.

I’m usually pretty good at food predictions and this one had me flummoxed. 🙁

Jeremy came to the rescue with the idea of banana, slicing it up and using it as a base to stick the crackers in. We tried and came up with this.

Yikes! It’s definitely chuckle worthy. Perhaps it’s a shack in tribute to the times of the Great Depression (thinking of one of my favorite books, The Worst Hard Time), where dust would blow in and cover every single surface of one’s home through the clapboard construction. Yes, that is it.

Pretty sad overall at least in appearance. Please try to imagine this with little lampposts out of cinnamon sticks adorning corners of the house. A fresh snowfall of shredded coconut would have blanketed the ‘lawn’. There might have been a chimney out of sweet and delicious dried pineapple. I could go on and on, I had a lot of ideas.

The best part of this disaster?? The cracker is delicious! It’s a great slightly sweet and oh so crunchy cracker.

   

   

I’m very thankful that at least a tasty (most important) cracker came out of this business. A cracker that tastes really good with an apple, or some natural peanut butter spread on one side, or even crumbled on top of some organic plain yogurt (today’s breakfast).

Have you had a kitchen fail lately? and Have you ever made a gingerbread house?

xoxo