I'm really impressed that the recipe you tried made such a delicate hanukkiah. The whole point of construction grade gingerbread is to be dry and stucturally sound. The piping of slurry is fab. To make the recipe you have less dry, you can bake it at a lower temperature, or for less time, or maybe even no convection and making up the time and temp if it's the fan that's drying it too much, but less dry means less sound.

You might also look for recipes for gingerbread clay or putty, or try using your scraps to see if you can invent your own using water and fat, but that also might not taste good once dry.

in general, you can have cookie good and not so buildable, or dryer and tougher and structually sound, but not so dry as to be brittle and shattery.

Kids will eat anything wher the pleasure is in the "and you can eat it".

If it's just not wasting, you can break it up after, soak in milk and eggs, and make gingerbread pudding.

Good luck with the project!

Well Sol, your gingerbread recipe certainly produced better tasting gingerbread and the construction looked pretty good for a bit:

Unfortunately, it didn't quite have the strength to support the cantilever. After about an hour the top broke in half. Perhaps I should have baked it a bit longer. It was done just right for eating - wonderfully chewy, but it might have stood up better if it was baked a bit drier/harder.

I think I'm done for this year. Next year, I might try half molasses / half corn syrup to get a balance between taste and strength. Something mid-way between the two recipes.

The other alternative is to make an armature and cover that with the gingerbread. Hanukkah sameach!

Hanukkah sameach!

I thought about that, but that would feel like cheating. :) And the other one is still holding up fine so I know it can be done with just gingerbread and royal icing.

I might add one or two additional layers of gingerbread inside the box beam. That's what I did to make the base strong - the base is a stack of gingerbread slabs similar to the base of the original one but with 6 layers instead of 3 for more height.

Absolutely CS. It's hard to judge the size of your cantilever, by the picture, but, gingerbread used for any type of structure cannot be baked until soft and chewy, because, as you unfortunately found out, the cantilever will collapse into itself.

Gingerbread, for any type of construction work, must be baked until hard and crisp, to keep from breaking.

Btw, if the center of your baked cookie is still soft once it's had time to cool, lay a piece of foil over it and put it back in the oven to bake for a few extra minutes, until gingerbread feels slightly firmer in the center, and the foil will protect the edges from burning.

The gingerbread will continue to set hard as it cools. Cardboard is often used for support, but I don't like to use non-edible elements in my work.

The wreath above is a fairly large piece, but it held up throughout the holidays, without any support, because I baked it thoroughly, plus I wanted it to look nice from either side of the door.

There are other tricks used for support though, so next time you try GB -- no matter which recipe you use -- shoot me an email, and I will walk you through the process. memoriesinthebaking @ gmail. com

Sol