Hello again my Witches!
In today’s times of child leashes and neighborhood watches, goodness knows it’s gotten harder to keep up a nice healthy diet of children. But rather than give in to the part of us that always wants to cheat (I see you reaching for that fake blood for your potions!) we just need to invest a little more time in our lures.
The most traditional and, arguably, the most successful lure is a good old fashioned ginger bread house! So, today I’ll be offering some tips and tricks to ensure that your house can draw in as many new guests as you need!
The first step of the gingerbread house is to build the foundation. One thing that many amateurs may not realize is that the foundational pieces of your house should not be visible in the final product. This is for one simple reason: strong gingerbread rarely tastes good! By building a foundational wall/floor underneath your visible wall/floor, you can have strong gingerbread to support your home and softer, better tasting gingerbread as decoration and as a yummy snack for anyone you’re trying to lure.
Additionally, this will allow you to reuse the same lure again and again. If your guests are eating away at the actual support structure of your home every time they take a bite of the walls, it won’t be long until your house falls apart entirely. But, if they’re just eating the outer wall layer, you can just replace that without worrying about the structural integrity of your home at large.
So, go ahead and use the hardest, strongest recipe you can find in the skeleton of your house, you’ll build on top later and no one ever has to know! And, since your guests won’t be tasting this wall, this is your chance to take a couple little magic short cuts. We won’t tell if you don’t!
Once your foundation and support structure are in place, go on to building those external walls. This is where your gingerbread should get tastier and more decorative.
Before starting this step, sit down and figure out just how fancy you want your lure to be. On the one hand, beautifully ornate walls will often attract more children (after all, goodness knows that children aren’t typically worried about having TOO much decoration). But, on the other, your walls must look consistent for each new child who comes along. If a previous child has eaten away at one of your tables, for example, you can just hide it away until you’re able to re-bake, but your walls can’t really be hidden. So, if you design an extremely ornate wall, just keep in mind that it will be harder and take more time to replace it every time you get a new guest.
With your walls in place, it’s time to turn your attention to your roof. Now, the roof of your house is completely up to you. It’s more there to make your home look complete than anything else. Most children won’t be able to reach it, so it doesn’t have to taste amazing and if you charm your land properly, it doesn’t have to protect you from nature. Generally, I use a modified lace cookie. It is lightweight, so the magic to position it is negligible, and I just love the way the natural light shines through. (Being lit by the moon and the sun just makes my potions so much stronger!)
During these steps you may be wondering how to protect your house for the elements and the creatures you DON’T want to lure on in and eat. I’ll be honest, I do cheat just a teensy tiny bit here. Rather than worry about building a million charms to block every kind of animal, I just throw up a quick little bubble charm called defendat et abscondam. Cast this charm properly and it’ll hide your home from the pesky eyes/ears/etc of anyone except those you specifically allow through (say, impressionable young adventurers?). And when I say anyone, I do mean anyone. My house is hidden from animals, parents, and investigators alike! I also go ahead and cast the much more common bulla to protect my lure from the elements.
Once you have the internal and external walls and the roof of your lure set up, the next step will, of course, be decorations and furniture. But, that’s a discussion for the future!
For now I’ll leave you with a couple recipes to get started with.
Have a wicked day!
Modified Lace Cookie Sheet
2 ½ cups unsalted butter
5 cups sugar
5 cups brown sugar
5 cups light corn syrup
1 ¼ tsp sea salt
5 cup flour
10 cup chopped blanched almonds
In your largest saucepan, heat first 5 ingredients on medium low heat until mixture is smooth. Stir occasionally.
Remove from heat and stir in flour and almonds.
Line a large baking sheet with parchment.
Place teaspoons of the dough onto the baking sheet, roughly 3 to 4 inches apart. The dough spreads out flat as it cooks, by arranging the dough this way, it will spread enough to connect with the surrounding dough and form a flat sheet.
Bake at 375˚ for 8 minutes or until the cookies are beginning to brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool. If you want the edges of your roof to be straight, use a severing spell to cut the edges while the cookie sheet is hot.
Source: Saving Room for Dessert
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