The Gingerbread Grotto

All sorts of gingerbread goodies, hand-made in Saffron Walden.
Orders taken all year round, mainly at Christmas

All sorts of gingerbread goodies available at The Gingerbread Grotto!

Come along to the Gingerbread Grotto and decorate your own mini gingerbread houses and shapes!

Workshops will run from 6th - 17th December (see event section for times), including daytimes, after school, weekends and evenings and are suitable for anyone old enough to stick a sweet on a biscuit! Children must bring an adult with them; adults don't have to bring a child ;-) Days and times to follow.

Each workshop costs £16 per person (or £15 pp if 3 + booked on same session) and lasts about an hour; it includes decorating a mini gingerbread house and a large shaped biscuit such as a gingerbread man /lady, Christmas tree, snowflake, etc. Additional houses and biscuits may be decorated for an additional charge (£6 per additional house, £2. 50 per additional biscuit). You can turn your house into a pinata house, full of sweets, for an extra £2. Please drop me a line before booking if you would like to decorate lots, as we can then arrange a longer time slot. Full details on booking below.

As the icing will then need to set before your house is built, you'll leave your creations with me and I'll put them together and package up nicely for you, ready for you to collect a few days later. I know you'll want to take something away with you on the day, so that's what the biscuit is for - although if you would prefer to leave them with me to package nicely as a gift ( + 25p each), that's no problem : -)

I look forward to seeing you!

Catherine

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A bit about my gingerbread story : -)
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10 Christmasses ago, when my eldest daughter was in Year 1 at school and I'd been helping her class to cook other goodies, I asked the head teacher if I could make a gingerbread house with her class. I'd always wanted to make one, although i'd never made gingerbread before, and he thought it was a great idea. I went away and tested recipes, found one that would support a giant house and 25 children and I created a Hansel and Gretel spectacular with trees and reindeer as well as a house and people, all made out of gingerbread and edible treats!

It sat on a table at the side of their classroom for several weeks; they were so proud of it that no one touched it or took one sweet from it in all that time! Then on the last day of term, they all smashed it up and ate it : -)

The Gingerbread house then became an annual tradition at the school and people would always comment how the wonderful smell filled the whole school and how much fun it was.

Then we moved schools, I went back to the previous school the first year we'd moved to continue the tradition and the following year, the deputy head of that school became the head of our new school. I saw her one morning and just said "Gingerbread?" and she jumped at the idea of transferring it to this school : -) The only 'slight' difference being there were now 60 children in two year 1 classes (including my second daughter) rather than 25 in one and she wondered if we could make enough to feed the whole school of nearly 200 people!

Well we did it that year to tie in with their topic of Fairy stories, where they were reading Hansel & Gretel and to coincide with smashing it on World Book Day and the children loved it! That first one was a Hansel & Gretel house in a forest - with trees made out of different size stars stacked on top of each other - covering two 6-foot tables!

The next year, it tied in with their topic of buildings and house and we made a street the length of two 6 foot tables with 10 houses, 2 each of 5 different shapes and sizes, each with gardens made out of sweets and biscuits and all entirely decorated by the children.

The next year the topic was Fairytales again and we managed ambitious designs for 6 stories - a house & trees for Hansel & Gretel, a castle for Cinderella, table, chairs and beds for Goldilocks and the Three Bears, a bridge and meadow for The Three Billy Goats Gruff, houses made of sweetie straw, sticks and bricks for The Three Little Pigs and a very tall beanstalk with Jack, a cow and some jelly beans! !

The following years we've also tied in to fairytale stories, including with my third daughter's class and I try to do a different design each year. This year (although usually now done in February) will be the 10th year I've done it - it's lots of work, but so much fun! : -)

Alongside the school projects, we've obviously made our own at home each year, with my girls coming up with ever more ambitious designs year on year. . . A few years ago they wanted to make mini houses for their teachers, which we did and the next year on a spur of the moment thought, I posted a picture of theses mini ones on Facebook to see if anyone would like any. I was inundated with orders and a little gingerbread factory was born.

I love encouraging children to bake and you can include so much to do with maths, science, literacy, art, history, patterns and all sorts with the gingerbread in a very different way - it's so much fun! : -)

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A bit about gingerbread : -)
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Gingerbread is thought to be the oldest biscuit there is. Ginger has been used as a preservative for hundreds of years and the spices are said to warm the blood. In fact gingerbread dates back to ancient times when ginger was known for its medicinal properties, often used as a cure for stomach aches - ginger products are still recommended to help in particular with morning sickness during pregnancy (now there's a good excuse for gingerbread if ever I heard one! )

Crusaders returning from the Middle East in the 11th Century brought the new spice with them and, as the cost of the ingredients and spices dropped, gingerbreads slowly became more popular across Europe & Britain. The English added breadcrumbs to the recipes and in the 16th & 17th centuries, flour replaced the breadcrumbs to make gingerbread lighter and more like the version we know today.

It is said that important visitors to the court of Queen Elizabeth I were impressed with gingerbread portraits - so this is where the first gingerbread men were made!

The Brothers Grimm's fairytale of Hansel and Gretel in the early 1800's inspired the tradition of baking gingerbread houses and, as Christmas became more commercial over the years, gingerbread biscuits and decorations became an integral part of the season.

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