I’m goal oriented.
When I have a task in mind, I don’t feel happy until I finish it.
Yesterday was gingerbread night at a friend’s place. Basically, bring your pattern, it will get carved into gingerbread. Then build away. Last year I made a Star Destroyer. This year I was even more ambitious. I wanted to make a icosahedron. AKA, a d20.
The pattern was simple; I just needed a lot of triangles. At work I did some math and did my best to construct perfect equilateral triangles in cardboard. (The paper-cutter really helped.) I tried to be precise, but let’s face it, we’re dealing with gingerbread, not machined parts.
Things went fairly well. I used a bowl to help put the pieces together, and then “glued” them with icing. I used marshmallows inside to help support it inside, while I used Ritz crackers for scaffolding.
Unfortunately, the frosting was goopy. I finished and let it dry for awhile, but when I tried to remove it from the bowl, the dripped icing made it stick to the bowl. The extra weight made it collapse.
So, gingerbread d20 failed.
This annoyed me. A lot.
So I decided that I would have to try again. Immediately.
Due to a kitchen mishap, the triangle pattern I used the first time got destroyed. I had triangles that were 50% bigger, so I would have to use those.
My friend was kind enough to give me the recipe. Unfortunately I have no baking skill. While shopping for the ingredients though I saw a box to make gingerbread cookies. Score! I’m more interested in the building, than the taste, so making from scratch didn’t mean much to me.
I soon realized I didn’t have enough in the package for the twenty triangles I would need, so I left part way through to buy another box.
My shortcut though may have destroyed me. This looks like eating-gingerbread, not construction-grade gingerbread. After baking in the oven, they felt dangerously soft. I left them in for a bit longer, hoping that would harden them. All I think I did was burn the bottoms.
But now that I’ve let them sit, they look like they’ve hardened. The next batch out of the oven is not burnt, so we’ll see if they stiffen up.
This is going to be a multi-day project so I’ll update if I have more information. But I might just have to start from, literally, scratch.