The Gingerbread TARDIS

Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly...my family knows them all well. Another family fav is the Back to the Future trilogy. Therefore, it may come as no surprise that when, sometime last year, my siblings and I were introduced to Doctor Who, we were hooked. Really hooked.

But I'm still on Season 5 with Matt Smith, so NO SPOILERS.

He's good, but I miss David Tennant. :(

Anyway! This Christmas, David, Jenny, and I exchanged many pieces of Doctor Who merchandise. (Much to the confusion of our grandparents. Our aunts are fellow Time Lord fans.) Like this shirt, or this sonic screwdriver flashlight, or (my favorite, from Jenny to me) this TARDIS cookie jar.

There's also the necklace I made for Jenny, out of a cufflink:


Back to the TARDIS though. The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) is the Doctor's time machine spaceship. It looks like a British Police Public Call Box from 1963, because its chameleon circuit broke and stuck that way.

In my search for unique, geeky Christmas gifts, I came across this blog post, on constructing a gingerbread TARDIS. The day after I flew home for the holidays, Jenny and I set to work.

We chose to use this gingerbread and frosting recipe.

We cut out carefully measured patterns:


We mixed the dough with Mom's incredible KitchenAid:


We danced:


We consulted the directions without getting flour on the computer:


We used steak knives to cut out building blocks:


See those little leftover square pieces? They were DELICIOUS.


Believe me, the entire family was gingerbread-dough-filled that evening.

The baked pieces weren't quiiiiiite, shall we say, straight? Precise? Their corners weren't exactly, oh, right-angled?


Whatever! We make it work! We do!

We frosted four little Police Public Call Box signs, with baggies, toothpicks, spit, patience, and love:




We made little paper window panes:


Then, assembly began. We used frosting spreaders, spatulas, and fingers to cement the uneven walls to each other and the base. Getting the door to stand ajar was tricky; we finally propped it up from the inside with a cookie cutter until the frosting hardened. It looked rather messy. Adding the corner pieces, roof, signs, and a whole lot more frosting spruced it up to our satisfaction:




Note the wonky door and awesome door poster:


What TARDIS would be complete without a Time Lord?


David added some graffiti:


And then we had a photo shoot:



Our creation was displayed until Christmas Eve, when we wrapped it in plastic and froze it while we were in San Diego. Yesterday, we thawed it and started gnawing on it. It's pretty stale...but good dipped in milk, coffee, or hot chocolate!

Sadly, Gingerbread Doctor met his match in Golden Retriever Maddie. I don't think he'll be regenerating from this one.