with the storm ramping up and my Fresh Direct order safely in my possession I began the baking. Blog Girl’s instructions were to use Martha Stewart’s recipe which I completed rather easily – thank you – and without sounding too boastful my gingerbread dough smelled fantastic! As my brown blobs of ginger goodness chilled in the fridge I cut out the template house pieces that Blog Girl so helpfully posted online. In no time my templates were complete and my dough was ready for phase two. 
I didn’t want to bake too many pieces at once, just in case something went wacky so I began with just one house (6 pieces). Martha directed that I roll the cookies to ¼ of an inch but Blog Girl instructed that I go to 1/8 inch… indecision, great thanks. I stayed true to BG (blog girl) since these were her houses in design and went with the 1/8” thickness. My new fondant cutter worked like a charm slicing through the cool dough (yes I now own a fondant cutter) and in no time my first batch was in my 350 degree oven for a length of 12-14 min (as
instructed by Martha – BG gave no direction as to baking temperature or time). At the end of my 12 min cycle my cookies were flat, dark and had a slight taste of burnt coal. I will cut to the chase and tell you that after 4+ hours of trial and error (and 8 inches of snow fall) I discovered that the cookies should be at least ¼ inch thick, placed on the top rack of the oven and baked for no longer than 10 ½ minutes. Martha and BG – you can both suck it! By 10pm the dough was not done (1/3 still in the fridge) but I was done with the dough.
