Gingerbread house — Old Recipes

Ever since my baby girl was a baby girl, I have wanted to build special gingerbread house for her. I tried kit after kit, Christmas after Christmas, but I was never satisfied.This year, I was determined. I drew several templets. The designs varied from an old Damascus home to a classic American victorian. However, we got very busy in the restaurant, and I, sadly, did not get around to build the house before my daughter came home from college buuut when I asked her if she is interested to work with me on the gingerbread house, she said yes. :)Alya, my daughter is studying architecture in Boston. How perfect is that? She has been obsessed with Scandinavia ever since we went last summer. So, of course, she choose a building we saw in Stokholm, Sweden. She designed the model on her computer and printed the templets while I got the ingredients and brought home the mixer from the restaurant. We researched and found two different gingerbread recipes and debated as to which one would take the prize. Well, she won. We used recipe from the Food Network and went to work. After we made the dough, I remembered all my rolling pins are in the restaurant so my daughter ended up using a wine bottle (something she said is common in college). She rolled, I cut the templets, and we baked.I made hole in the back wall to insert lights. We used crushed hard candy to make our stained glass windows. We baked the ginger bread walls 3/4 th of the way, took them out, added the crushed candies, and placed them back in the oven to allow the walls to firm up and the crushed candies to melt.It took both my daughter and I several tries and couple days before we were able to put the house together. I thought that we were done but no no, not Alya. She put her headphones on, turned on Love Actually (her favorite Christmas movie) and started to add the last touches. After couple hours, the house looked stunning and I was impressed.