Christmas snow globe

I have found a new thing to do with jars and gingerbread! 

I decided that I would be making my Christmas presents this year, and the first cab off the rank is this gorgeous little Christmas snow globe. I am not a great planner when it comes to making things like this, preferring instead to figure things out as I go along. 

The first thing I decided was that I would make gingerbread, and that somehow it would be stacked to look like a tree. I have seen this done before with gingerbread stars, but I really wanted it to look as tree-like as possible, so thought I might hand cut the biscuits instead. 

I used round cutters first, and then cut the edges into points. To make sure they didn't break off, I squashed the points a bit, rounding them off just a little. 

The next step was to fill the bottom of my jar with castor sugar, building up slightly the corner where my tree was going to be "planted". Before I placed each biscuit on the snow, I put a dab of royal icing in the middle, and also iced the bottom of my next biscuit as I placed it in. After holding them together for only a couple of seconds they clung together quite nicely. 

In the end there were ten biscuits in the stack. To be honest I had actually made eleven, but no matter how hard I tried, the largest biscuit was just not going to fit through the opening. No matter, I was hungry anyway and wanted to be sure the gingerbread was fabulous. (Yes it was!)

After finishing my little fondant star for the tree, I actually made the presents next, not yet knowing what else would help to fill out the jar. 

My three little presents were made from Fantales covered in various bits of fondant. I find colouring fondant tiresome, much preferring to handpaint my creations once they are assembled. 

As well as being a my preferred process (no coloured hands!) I think the colours are much richer when applied this way. 

  

My little snowman was the final creation. He is for show only, made entirely of fondant and toothpicks. When I first put him together, I skewered him from top to bottom to hold him in place. Once he had been worked on for a while I removed the skewer and he held together quite well on his own. 

The trick to making things like his carrot nose stay in place is to punch a hole in the fondant with a skewer and then to wedge the carrot inside. I also used this technique when adding eyes and buttons. 

Lastly I skewered him through the middle with a toothpick, adding a little fondant glove to each end. 

...and there you have it! My little gingerbread Christmas snow globe. The fun part is going to be making each one look just a little bit different. 

On to number two...