The Curse of British Baking Shows

Is it just me, or do you binge watch baking shows and suddenly decide you need to see if you can whip up some kind of sugary masterpiece in your kitchen? With Halloween just around the corner, I decided to dig out my Christmas cast iron gingerbread mold and see if I could modify it to create a spooky (but kind of classy) Halloween gingerbread house. 

 I bought the cast iron form at a garage sale several years ago. One side has the template for the front of the house and roof section. The other side of the template has the forms for the home's sides and awnings. Due to this fact, baking gingerbread becomes a labor of love.  Once the gingerbread is mixed, rested in the fridge, rolled out, cut to fit and pressed into the form, it takes 25 minutes to bake each section and ten minutes of cooling before the pieces can be removed and subsequent pieces baked.  

After I assembled the house pieces with very thick buttercream frosting, I piped on details with black frosting and painted the shingles and doors with watered black food coloring.