National Gingerbread House Day

Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

December 12th is National Gingerbread House Day in the United States.

What is a gingerbread house? Well, it's a house made of gingerbread. Essentially, a gingerbread house is a rather individual form of cookie. It's made from cookie dough that is cut into the appropriate shapes - walls, roofs etc. - then baked and assembled. The most common type of material used is a crisp ginger biscuit made from gingerbread, but they can also be built from dough that is moulded into shape then baked.

Gingerbread, and gingerbread houses, are both associated with Christmas, so December is a logical time of year to celebrate them. Once the house is assembled (melted sugar tends to be used as "mortar", as does royal icing), it is decorated with such as icing to represent snow. Candies can be used to further decorate the house, or even make parts such as the roof. Gingerbread houses can range from a simple gingerbread cabin to a full-blown mansion, and just about any type of building has been made into a gingerbread house at some point. Even entire villages have been made this way.

National Gingerbread Day

June 5th is National Gingerbread Day in the United States.

The name gingerbread is a pretty good description of what it actually is. Gingerbread is a bread product that has been flavoured with ginger.

Ginger is a spice and the name refers to the root, or rhizome, of the plant zingiber officinale, which originated in southern China. The spice has since been spread across the rest of the world, and is used in both sweet and savoury dishes. As well as the ginger, gingerbread is normally flavoured with treacle, or molasses, instead of sugar.

Gingerbread comes in a wide range of products, all of which have gingerbread in the name. These range from types of cakes, to items more reminiscent of a biscuit, or cookie.

One common gingerbread item is the gingerbread man, which is a biscuit/cookie that is shaped in a rough semblance of a man, or woman's, figure. The figure is then usually adorned with such as icing and small candies, to add features to it.