Wrapping up vacation time today, getting ready for the year ahead. The food project over the last few days, mostly captained by Max and his girlfriend Marie, was a gingerbread “house”. It’s actually Castle Black from Game of Thrones, a major interest in the family these days.

Castle Black is a rough castle built at the foot of a massive wall meant to keep the primitives to the north from coming south. It’s situated in a harsh icy environment:

This is a pretty involved construction, we quintupled the gingerbread recipe. And there are plenty of details, like the chocolate elevator running on graham cracker rails, and a pretzel stick portcullis. The castle is manned by gummy bears with chocolate chip hats to keep them warm.

There was a phase after it was built where it had only minimal icing and no candy, for a more realistic bleak look, but everyone knows the eating phase is better with icing and candy, so it was soon festooned as you see here.

The key transition was when Max was applying M+M’s to the roof, and I asked what they were meant to represent, and he smirked and said, “it’s candy on gingerbread!”