Cookie Mosque

The foundation stone of this idea came from the Classic Gingerbread house. I made it last month for Eid. Living in a different culture I always make a tiny bit extra effort to create something that my 5 year old son can associate with in terms of religious festivities. His friends get cookies, gingerbread houses and presents on Christmas; I want him to have the same feeling of celebration too.

The end result of my Architectural venture resembled the Blue Mosque a bit! Our printer had some last minute issues so I could not print a template. Good old paper and pencil came to the rescue.

 I drafted a shape for the dome and minarets which seemed all balanced on paper but I did end up with issues during assembly.

I cut out the drafted mosque template using a sharp knife on the cookie dough. *Chilled Cookie dough* yes thats important. I was worried that the shape will stretch out if I tried lifting it up from the counter to the cookie sheet so i actually placed the rolled dough onto the baking sheet and just peeled the excess off after cutting the shape.

Once all my pieces were baked and cooled I started the assembly. This is where I realised that the dome part was thicker and thus heavier than the rest of the piece. it started cracking as soon as I had it standing up in position with the side walls. Eventually it toppled under its own weight !

So a good tip would be to choose a shape that is balanced in a cookie form not just on paper AND to roll the dough evenly.

I troubleshooted by slicing the dome off completely with a sharp knife and adding it separately behind the front wall. I used thick royal icing for the entire assembly. I used instant royal icing this time instead of the egg white method. recipes of which can be found on the internet.

How To make Sugar Lace without Tylose Powder

For the design details I tried making sugar lace for the first time,without Sugarveil. Turned out really well. I got the recipe for it from youtube but finding ingredients here in germany is like finding dory! I took the liberty of replacing tylose powder with Kukident available at all drogerie markets. its cellulose and it worked perfectly. Here is the link to the recipe 3 Ingredient Sugar Lace

After peeling the lace from its mat I just snipped it off to add details on the windows and minarets.

Loved the end product.