‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all the through the house, my brother and I were trying decide what to do with this giant hunk of gingerbread dough that we’d made the previous night.

Originally the plan was to make a basic gingerbread house, but we soon realized that was stupid. “An aircraft carrier!” suggested Louis. “What about a gingerbread tall ship?” I asked. We laughed, and then each spent the next 25 seconds attempting to mentally construct sea-going gingerbread vessels. “Nah…We don’t have the capabilities,” was the general consensus. Then Louis had a stroke of genius: A head.

Yep. That was the answer. Here’s how we did it:

STEP 1: Select two bowls over which you will mold the dough into two halves of a head. (Pyrex works.)

STEP 2: Roll dough out, and drape over buttered Pyrex bowl; Trim edges.

STEP 3: Ask a master craftsman (in this case, my brother) to lovingly carve a face into the dough.

STEP 4: Stand back and admire the tortured face of your gingerbread person.

STEP 5: Bake the poor screaming fellow at 350º for 20 minutes.

STEP 6: Allow to cool before removing face from bowl.

STEP 7: When the thing still won’t come off the bowl, come up with an ill-conceived plane: Put it in the freezer!

STEP 8: Remove from freezer and attempt to remove face; Fail.

STEP 9: Cook back of head at 350º for 35 minutes. Feel free to insert a large, rolled-up piece of foil between the bowl and the dough to create neck fat.

STEP 10: Reform another face, but this time do it over some parchment paper, dummy!

STEP 11: Finally, successfully remove the pieces of head.

STEP 12: Glue ’em together. We used our patented Caramel Bonding™ (take the fancy caramel from your mom’s pantry, melt it in the microwave, and stick in between the head parts.

STEP 13: If you’re feeling sad that your dad has to work on Christmas, you could always leave him a heart-warming message.

And that’s how you make a festive Christmas head! (You’re welcome.)

Bookmark this!