Monaco Company Gingerbread Mansion
A Gingerbread Mansion?
Gingerbread houses are adorable, but Monaco Baking has taken it one step further with their gingerbread mansions. For over a decade they have been creating beautifully ornate designs. Choose from their Huge Mansion, Jolly House, or Mini Mansion. All are beautifully decorated and full of detail, including wreaths on the door, tiny Christmas trees, doors and shutters, even plates with the greeting "Happy Holidays."
As much as we love the way these houses look, we were equally charmed by the wonderful aroma once they're taken out of the box. This isn't any generic, mass-produced gingerbread in a factory. Monaco's houses are all carefully baked using an old-fashioned German recipe for gingerbread, and the fragrance and taste attests to this.
A Very Brief History of Gingerbread
True, we delight in these confectionary crafts, but where exactly did the gingerbread house come from?
Ginger itself has a long history, having been first grown in Asia. During the middle ages, the crusaders brought the spice to England, where it was soon being used in cakes and breads. Ladies of the medieval court began giving gingerbread to knights going into tournament. Eventually, gingerbread-baking became a respected profession in European countries like Germany.
The gingerbread house, however, is often contributed to the nineteenth century Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel; the two children stumble upon a "house built entirely from bread with a roof made of cake, and the windows were made of clear sugar" and proceed to eat from it, falling into an evil witch's trap.
After the story was published and became famous, however, bakers began to make their own houses out of gingerbread, the spiced cookie being sturdy enough for artistic construction. Now, every year we can look forward to these candy creations making the season a little brighter.
Gingerbread houses are adorable, but Monaco Baking has taken it one step further with their gingerbread mansions. For over a decade they have been creating beautifully ornate designs. Choose from their Huge Mansion, Jolly House, or Mini Mansion. All are beautifully decorated and full of detail, including wreaths on the door, tiny Christmas trees, doors and shutters, even plates with the greeting "Happy Holidays."
As much as we love the way these houses look, we were equally charmed by the wonderful aroma once they're taken out of the box. This isn't any generic, mass-produced gingerbread in a factory. Monaco's houses are all carefully baked using an old-fashioned German recipe for gingerbread, and the fragrance and taste attests to this.
A Very Brief History of Gingerbread
True, we delight in these confectionary crafts, but where exactly did the gingerbread house come from?
Ginger itself has a long history, having been first grown in Asia. During the middle ages, the crusaders brought the spice to England, where it was soon being used in cakes and breads. Ladies of the medieval court began giving gingerbread to knights going into tournament. Eventually, gingerbread-baking became a respected profession in European countries like Germany.
The gingerbread house, however, is often contributed to the nineteenth century Grimm fairy tale Hansel and Gretel; the two children stumble upon a "house built entirely from bread with a roof made of cake, and the windows were made of clear sugar" and proceed to eat from it, falling into an evil witch's trap.
After the story was published and became famous, however, bakers began to make their own houses out of gingerbread, the spiced cookie being sturdy enough for artistic construction. Now, every year we can look forward to these candy creations making the season a little brighter.