Da-who Dor-aze!

For Christmas, I decided to start a new tradition - recreating a famous scene from a Christmas movie in gingerbread. I'll be doing this every year, hopefully. I decided to start with the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! It took me two whole days, and while it's certainly not professional, I'm proud of it. For my first time I think it's pretty good.

 I started off by printing off the characters on photo paper, as per the instructions on University of Cookie.

I used those as a pattern for cutting out the dough (warning: it takes forever!)

It required a lot of baking (I made extras of everything, just in case, which was pretty useful in the end). The project took over the whole kitchen for both days. Sitting on the stove are pans of triangles - I made those to use as bases to get the Whos and buildings to stand up. It worked perfectly!

I used royal icing for the outlines, and then tried to do flood icing inside. It didn't really work - the tips clogged about every 2 centimeters, and I had to keep stopping to try to fix it. It took at least twice as long as it should have. I was using a fairly large tip, too - maybe the icing was just a little too thick?

The Whos getting their clothes. In the end, I only used about 4 or 5 colors for the clothes, just so I wouldn't have to keep coloring new batches of icing.

One of the Whos standing! And Mom said it would never work. The triangle on the back is attached with regular icing.

The finished village! The trees around the back are ice cream cones with green frosting, and the star on the Christmas tree is cut from tin foil (Dad did it). Yes, I know it's not exactly show-stopping, but for my first time, I think it's pretty good.

Close-up. I ran out of icing before I could finish Cindy Lou Who (hence the ornament not being filled in). My problem was tinting too much icing for each color in the beginning - it meant I ran out just before the end.

Another shot of the village with all the singing Whos. I love their hair. All in all, I think it's a success!