MATT: Eight misses.
LAURA: (pained) Oh!
MARISHA: Why can't we hit this wall?
TALIESIN: This is going very poorly.
MARISHA: What is this?!
ASHLEY: This is a journey.
ROBBIE: What's more stationery than a wall?
MATT: A door.
ROBBIE: Oh yeah. The secret enemies.
TALIESIN: The next enemy is the ground. We're just not going to be able to hit it.
MATT: It does manage to hit the wall, but this one, unfortunately, was not charged with the elemental fire and is literally just a smear of dookie.
LAURA: Aw, just dookie dukes.
ASHLEY: Okay, I give him a little scritch on his head. It's okay. It's okay. You'll get it next time.
MATT: (monkey chittering)
ASHLEY: We'll kill something later.

Campaign 3 Episode 7, "Behind the Curtain," December, 9, 2021
Thanks to critrole.fandom.com for the transcript from the episode shown above.

Gingerbread cookie with icing in the shape of the roper wall.

Living 4th Wall Cookies

We broke the fourth wall.

'Tis the season! As I'm sure you're aware. As we were watching this episode my partner suggested that it might be fun to do a recipe based on the big battle and the literal wall that the party had such a hard time hitting. It was immediately a good idea. After all, with the holidays right around the corner (all of the seasonal cliches!) I didn't want to make a full gingerbread house, but I could make a gingerbread wall! Well, not so much a wall as a creature that fills the hole in the wall... but, in my opinion, this was more fun than decorating a whole house!

I had never made gingerbread before. I watch a lot of Food Network, so I have sort of an idea of the texture it should be when you make it. I had also never made royal icing before, but again, I knew what I was looking for. So this entire recipe for me, front to back, was a completely new experience. But, I learned that craft stores often have baking supplies. I headed to my local Michael's to get piping bags and tips, maybe some other decorative things (if I could find them), and then, on Monday night (which was not enough time) for the first time ever, I made gingerbread cookies.

One important note about this recipe - this is meant to be an individual cookie recipe, I would not suggest making this in sheet pans to try and make buildings. But it's great for individual cut-out cookies!

Ingredients

Gingerbread

3.5 cups flour (plus more for dusting)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice
6 Tbsp unsalted butter (melted)
1 Tbsp Vegetable shortening (melted)
2/3 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup molasses
1 egg

Royal Icing

1.5 cups Powdered Sugar
2 Tbsp warm water
1/2 Tbsp light corn syrup
1/8 tsp vanilla extract

I want to note that this is not the standard recipe for royal icing. Traditional royal icing calls for meringue powder or egg whites. That kind of "traditional" royal icing will definitely work here. But this is my "easier to get at a grocery store and not have a bunch of leftover eggs" version.

Directions

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter, melted shortening, brown sugar, and molasses. Beat an egg in with the wet ingredients (molasses mixture) with a mixer (you can use a stand mixer, but I don't have one, so I used a hand mixer, and it definitely worked just fine).
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in batches. I did it about a cup at a time to avoid flour flying everywhere, but you could do more or less depending on the size of your bowls. Mix well.
Divide the dough evenly between 2 sheets of plastic wrap. Pat into 1/2 inch thick "disks" and wrap. Refrigerate until firm, 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Working with 1 "disk" of dough at a time, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until about 1/4 thick. Cut out the shapes. Arrange at least 1 inch apart on the prepared pans. Brush off any flour and refrigerate for another 15 minutes.
Bake, (if you bake 2 pans of cookies at the same time, switch racks halfway through) until the cookies are golden around the edges, about 10-12 minutes. Transfer pans to racks and let cool for 2 minutes. Remove the cookies to the racks to cool completely.
To create royal icing put the powdered sugar in a medium bowl. In a small bowl combine warm water, vanilla, and corn syrup - mix well. Combine wet ingredients with powdered sugar and mix well. You should be able to pull a spoon out, let it drip back down, and see it disappear in around 10 seconds. (If you feel it's too thick add water ONE DROP at a time - too thin add more powdered sugar 1 tsp at a time).
Spread or pipe royal icing and decorate as desired.

Tips, Suggestions, and Substitutions

Tips & Suggestions

I'll be honest - I really thought I overworked the dough, but I had no issues with the texture once all was said and done! The moral of the story - make sure everything is really well incorporated, you won't regret it.
As you can see from my pictures above and my quotes in the directions "disks" is a loose term. Mine were more half-spheres. That's because I realized after the fact that I had squished it too thin, so, to solve the problem, I folded them, and voila! 2 "disks." The shape, honestly, isn't super important before they go in the fridge, the more important part is that they aren't too thick, because you want them to chill all the way through.
I recommend getting sprinkles or other things to decorate your cookies! I even found eye-shaped sprinkles at the craft store. Don't be scared to get creative!

Substitutions

In the middle of making this, I realized we had no cookie cutters. I knew we didn't have a "wall" shape, so I was prepared for that, but I also had way more dough than the 6 cookies that I wanted to make for this recipe, which is fine, but I didn't have a great way to cut them out. I started using cups and making circles or free-handing other shapes like triangles (even a heart!). Cookie cutters aren't necessary. But a good sense of humor and the ability to play with the dough is highly encouraged.
The obvious one - you can of course substitute my royal icing recipe for really any frosting (I'm not gonna tell you how to frost your cookies, if you want butterscotch frosting on your gingerbread, go for it) You can either make it yourself or buy it at a store. But you will want frosting, I don't recommend skipping it. The recipe doesn't have a lot of sugar, by design, and it's much better if it's got the frosting to make it sweeter.
To get the wall shape here I straight up put the recording of last week's session on my computer monitor, made the picture real big, and traced the wall. Then I cut out the tracing on the paper, put it on top of my gingerbread dough, and cut it out. Similar shapes include the poop emoji or an elf hat. You can see my paper cut out in some of my WiP pics above!
If you can find something to press into the cookies to sort of get the stonework shape, that might be worth it if you're doing the wall. I searched everywhere and couldn't find bricks or stonework patterns. so I freehanded it. No complaints, but if you can find it, go for it.

In Conclusion...

I'm not the type of person who has to have gingerbread every holiday season. That being said, I've had more gingerbread this year than ever. And that is not a complaint. In all honesty, this very much reminded me of my grandmother's gingersnap recipe, especially once they were frosted. Which was a nice warm feeling. My partner wasn't a big fan, but I say that knowing that gingerbread isn't for everyone, and it's not one of his favorite flavors, he'd rather have a sugar cookie, which is okay too. We both still had a great time with the recipe, and he even decorated one of the walls (he said it's the wall when they beat it and it was dissolving). But if you enjoy gingerbread, even in small doses, this was so much fun and the decorating was worth it. I would definitely do it again, and I'd recommend it to anyone as a fun holiday cookie activity.

This recipe for the cookies came from the Food Network Magazine Holiday Cookie Cookbook. I didn't make any changes to this one, besides changing the royal icing recipe. Speaking of which, the royal icing came from the cooking blog Fresh April Flours. (And thank you to them for having an easier-to-execute royal icing recipe). So, what did you think of my decorating jobs? Did I do good? And, if you also made these cookies, what did you think? I'd really love to hear feedback, or if people found this recipe as much fun as I did. I'm going to try to get my cut out up here in a useful way, so check back in the comments, because, if I can get it on the site, that's where it'll be. And remember, if you have any questions or suggestions, or just wanna say hi, please feel free to do any of those things in the comments below. If you wanna stay in the loop with what I'm making make sure to follow me on Pinterest or Twitter. Thanks for visiting, and don't forget to love each other. Is it Thursday, yet?

It was a wall, it was a scary wall.

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