An award-winning pastry artist shares her secrets for creating classic gingerbread houses and a bounty of other gingerbread whimsies, including a gingerbread space rocket, robot, and chess set! Includes 16 beautiful projects for bakers of all ages and skill levels. Provides step-by-step instructions for making the perfect gingerbread, creating and coloring icing, and putting them together for fun edible art pieces to display and enjoy all year long. Every recipe is paired with beautiful full-color photos, including progress photos for ease of understanding. Pastry and decorating tips and techniques are also provided. Hardcover. 176 pages. 8-1/4 inches wide by 10-1/4 inches high. A pastry artist based in Ottawa, Canada, author and photographer Catherine Beddall is a two-time winner of the CMHC/Habitat for Humanity's gingerbread house competition in Ottawa, and 2011 winner of the Canadian Gingerbread House Championship. She runs her own business, and she is a pastry arts instructor at Algonquin College.

"The story of 5 of Santa's Elves- Hans, Grietal, Kirsten, Franz, and Stefan who teach sisters Meghan and Mollie, and their friend Sammy, about the power of hope and believing in the magic of Christmas"--

"Exhilarating...A wildly imagined, head-spinning, deeply intelligent novel." - The New York Times Book Review "[W]ildly inventive…[Helen Oyeyemi's] prose is not without its playful bite." –Vogue The prize-winning, bestselling author of Boy Snow Bird, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, and Peaces returns with a bewitching and imaginative novel. Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children's stories, beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe. Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there's the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it's very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee's early youth. The world's truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread, however, is Harriet's charismatic childhood friend Gretel Kercheval —a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met. Decades later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother's long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet's story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi's inimitable style and imagination, it is a true feast for the reader.

This book will show you how a few easy recipes, everyday ingredients, and basic kitchen equipment are all you need to create a beautiful gingerbread house. Learn how to bake and build a gingerbread house from start to finish, and then find creative ideas for decorating your house, from butterscotch windows to candy-covered trees, helping you create a gingerbread house of your very own design. Whether you decide to recreate one of the designs provided, or choose to create your own work of art, this book will help you have a fun and memorable experience, and a gingerbread house to be proud of.

“A magical tale, brimming with heart." —Anne Ursu, National Book Award–long-listed author of The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy Maud has grown up in a house made of gingerbread, wanting nothing more than to be a witch like Mother Agatha. But just like all of Agatha's gingerbread creations—from the magical house to the chocolate mousse squirrel—Maud will turn back into crumbs if anything ever happens to Agatha. This seems unthinkable…until Hansel and Gretel, a pair of witch hunters, push Agatha into the cottage's oven. To save herself and the other creations, Maud will have to go into the dangerous forest of the Shadelands to find the First Witch's spellbook. But with witch hunters on her trail and others interested in the book for their own means, can Maud bring back the only mother she's ever known…or will witch hunters capture her before she can save her gingerbread family?

Nothing's more enticing than an awesome, lusciously decorated gingerbread house. With designs for holidays and birthdays, these exquisite projects include a cottage, chalet, and two-story house--and customized windows, doors, chimneys, paths, trees, and even lighting add to the charm. Hundreds of helpful process shots; advice on tools and techniques; and patterns, piping templates, and tips on baking and assembling all assure magical results.

On a snowy winter's night, Mouse is snug in her bed . . . Then—crack!—a tree branch falls and destroys her house. Now Mouse must find a new place to live. With determination, resourcefulness, and some Christmas good fortune, Mouse finds not only another house but also a place she can truly call home.