Edible Homework - Gingerbread and Swiss Roll Castle

My youngest turned 7 last week and I shall blog about her birthday cake, which she designed and planned, separately.  She loves to bake!  Her topic homework was to create a castle using whichever method she chose.  Obviously she wanted to bake and make a castle, no cardboard models for her.  I may have screamed inwardly for a moment at the prospect of creating an edible castle and carrying it to school, however, I was swayed by her determination and her carefully designed and labelled plan for the project.

I was determined that my 7yo would make it herself, with minimal help from me.  If she wanted to create a grand design from gingerbread then it would be her work and not mine.  I helped her by using the oven but other than that all the work has been her own.  She made the gingerbread dough, Swiss rolls, chocolate ganache and royal icing.  She covered the Swiss rolls in ganache, piped the icing to construct the castle then made and stuck on all the sugarpaste leaves herself.  We are both very proud of her efforts! 

7yo created her own template for the gingerbread walls

The 'brick' pattern was created by rolling over a cooling rack rested on top of the dough.

The entrance door was made using thin biscuits inserted into the gingerbread doorway before baking.

7yo was very proud of her castle but thought it looked too plain and needed decorating

She cut various leaves out of sugarpaste and stuck them to the castle using a tiny smudge of royal icing

The finished Masterpiece! 

Cooking is such a fun activity to share as a family. Lots of ways to encourage learning as well with weighing, measuring, gross and fine motor skills all put to good use when baking. The best bit of course is eating what is baked, this castle is destined for my 7yo's Year 2 class tomorrow morning. That will be me walking along trying to avoid the torrential rain or anything else that might damage it.  I hope the class and teacher like it!