For the holidays, I figured I just had to do something akin to a gingerbread house. Now I won’t like, I suck at decorating them. I admire those who can do all of the fancy isomalt or gelatin sheet window-pane tricks, because that requires a lot of precision, patience, and skill. But in my case, while yes I have done some desserts like that in the past, I prefer keeping my houses simple. Namely because trying to decorate the house by piping at a 90 degree angle is hard. So for my take on a gingerbread house, I wanted to do a play on words, and make an icebox cake, and surround it with the cookies that form the gingerbread house itself! So the exterior is a gingerbread house, but the interior is essentially a layer cake. Icebox cake is basically made by sandwiching cookies, in this case larger gingerbread cookies, with cream. The entire thing is then refrigerated, or ice box’d(since that’s what we used to call fridges back in the day), so that the cream soaks into the cookies, softening them into a cake-like consistency. Russian honey(medovik) cake is made with that method, in case you were wondering! In this case, I went with gingerbread as my cookie, and a tonka bean-cream cheese whip, just to add some fragrance. Tonka beans taste like almonds, vanilla, cacao nibs, and cherries had a baby, and a lot of those flavors were just indicative of the holidays, without overwhelming or detracting from the spicing in my cookies. Overall, a pretty simple recipe that is just two components, but from these two components, you too can have a cute little gingerbread house-looking cake! Happy holidays, everyone!

Makes 1 icebox cake, or roughly 4-5 servings:
For the gingerbread dough:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 stick unsalted butter, browned
1 tbsp cold water
1oz dark molasses
1 egg white
1/4 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 tsp ground ginger
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of clove

In a bowl, combined all of your ingredients to form a dough. Allow the dough to rest in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. Then on a floured surface, roll it out to roughly 1/8-inch thickness. Cut out the shapes for a gingerbread house, and 4 additional squares to form the interior of the icebox cake. With any scraps, re-roll and cut out little teddy bear shapes. Bake the bigger squares for the gingerbread house and icebox cake at 375 degrees F for 12 minutes. For the teddy bears, bake those separately at 375 degrees F for 5 minutes. Allow the gingerbread to cool before using for assembly.

For the tonka bean cream cheese whip:
8oz cream cheese
4oz white chocolate
.5g grated tonka bean
a pinch of salt

Over a double boiler, start by melting the white chocolate completely. Add to that the cream cheese, tonka, and salt, and stir until combined. Then take off heat and beat until soft and spreadable before transferring to a piping bag.

For final assembly:
Powdered sugar

To assemble, start by spreading thin layers of the cream cheese mixture onto the squares of gingerbread and stack them first. Then press the gingerbread house pieces around the squares, using pipings of the cream cheese whip to glue the pieces together. Finish with more pipings of the cream cheese whip, the teddy bears, and some powdered sugar.