This roof was a complete nightmare… that turned into a dream.  I started out by doing a simple scalloped “quilted” technique.  (quick explanation of quilting: pipe a scalloped line across the rooftop, offset the next row of scallops until rows cover the roof with alternating scallop shapes.  Fill the spaces alternately so no two touching sections are wet at the same time and can retain their dimension)  The dimension looked pretty nifty, but too flat and too similar of a level as the house siding.  Grrr.  There is a lot of rooftop on this cookie, so it needed to look right.

I piped a ridge of grey frosting at the bottom of each scallop…  hmmm, closer, but still not quite right.  As a cookier, when something is “not quite right” that cookie is in the danger zone:  In danger of being eaten.  I was not particularly hungry and this cookie is 4″ x 8″ so I really wanted the design to come together and for me not to eat a cookie the size of my head… but it did smell really good… maybe just a nibble… NO!  I will get this right!

I thought I would give the roof one more shot and if it was a disaster, at least it would be a huge one that tasted good.  I piped yet another ridge of frosting onto the bottom edge of a scallop and pulled it up with a paint brush.  Hmmm… promising!  I brush embroidered all the shingles and stepped back from my creation… “It’s ALIVE!”  

I painted a little black food coloring into the crevices at the bottom of the scallops and brushed a bit of white across the faces to bring out the detail of the shingles.  I couldn’t stop myself from adding a beaded border along the rooflines.  Scary and fancy!

So, the moral of this cookie story:  Don’t give up on your disaster until you are 100% sure that it is a disaster.  Some of my favorite cookies started out as disasters.  The other moral to this story is:  Don’t leave all the lights in your house on and your door open… You are just asking for a monster to come inside!