Crumb is perfect for a whole grain sandwich bread!
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I was busier than I expected last week, but fortunately thereās no hurry with gingerbread. Yesterday I managed to put the base together, and it holds! I made a few brackets to reinforce the join, and they do seem to be capable of holding the weight. I coloured the icing so it wouldnāt stand out so much, and I need to scrape some of the excess off later.
Speculatius/speculoos/speculaas is more of a crisp biscuit texture and therefore more difficult to work with. It has to be baked in the right shape, so I put it on the outside of the bowl again. Even though I tried to line it up with the 12 time zones marked at the top of the bowl, itās slightly too narrow, which is annoying. The gingerbread succumbed to gravity a little and this involves more delicate pieces, so I put another dish under the bowl to minimise that effect. I also used less butter to grease the bowl so that it wouldnāt slide off as easily:
The continents are in different sections, although itās not that visible in the photo. It baked OK with a little sagging in West Africa and Siam, but only Europe came away from the bowl easily:
Disaster! Sweet, delicious disasterā¦
I guess Iāll have to try again, this time with a little more butter on the bowl and possibly smaller sections. Eurasia is really big and takes up more than half of the northern hemisphere, so that will be a challenge. Next time I might actually put a sheet of dough on the bowl and cut out the shape, which would probably be easier.
After trying again, Iām going to leave the poles flat. I couldnāt get a curved shape that looked right, but flat ends look OK and at least have the same colour as the rest of the globe.
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This is an amazing project to follow along with via your comments, thanks for keeping us updated. I canāt wait to see how it turns out!
Could you build up the poles with white frosting that mimics the polar ice sheets? 
Next project youāll have to build a gingerbread deathstar! 
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I was thinking of that, but for the past few years Iāve combined trying out new techniques with modelling something to do with the country or city Iām living in (which allows me to spend some time researching the history or significance of the object in the local language or visiting the place itself, if itās open to the public).
Languages are seriously the laziest āhardā subject out there (or at least theyāre considered hard in the UK). You can watch movies, follow cooking shows, travel, work abroad, chat online or in person, research topics of interest and write about them, read books or articles, make friends and so on. The more involved you are in things youāre interested in anyway, the better youāll get at what you like doing, while you get more fluent and more knowledgeable about the culture. As long as youāre working at a reasonably formal language level, the grammar is fairly similar across different vocabulary fields.
Alas, there are no polar ice sheets in 1492, and most of Scandinavia doesnāt exist either.
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another nail in the coffin. Scandinavia is a socialist lie!
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Well thenā¦will there be dragons?
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Unfortunately not - the globe Iām making is based on the oldest surviving terrestrial globe, while the second or third oldest (the Hunt-Lennox Globe) is the one with āHC SVNT DRACONESā. I like the one Iām doing because it has St. Brendanās Island, a.k.a. the Americas, on it. I did cross stitch a world map with a kraken on it once though:
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It works! (with a little distortion) The cookie dough is a bit thick though, so I might have to shave off a bit of the rings to make space.
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Itās almost finished now - I need to clean off some of the icing and let it set, but it looks like it should rotate when itās hard. Iāve used offcuts to give it an even spacing all around, but thereās no way to be sure it will work until I remove them.
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Nopeā¦ I guess shaving away some of the frame made it too weak, and once one strut buckled the rest followed soon after. The good thing is that I learned something from this experience and will be able to make the frame a bit thicker, wider and with more clearance next time. I think putting the axis of the globe at an angle puts more pressure on the struts too, which is something to allow for. Itās not earth shattering (heh) as the globe itself is still intact.
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Watching this is so much fun. Please keep posting updates.
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Itās beautimous! Hope you can figure out the frame.
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It uhhā¦ didnāt make it. Having sampled the gingerbread, it definitely seems to be softer than before with all the wet weather weāre having at the moment. Oh well, I think Iāll consider it a proof of concept, and Iāve learned enough to believe that I can make a better Death Star next month using a similar technique.
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sorry for your lossā¦saving the world is more difficult then it seems! 
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No big dealā¦ To be honest, we probably would have eaten it next week anyway - most of the point was to build it rather than look at it.
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For those interested, I just made popcorn. It was air popped,drizzled in garlic infused extra virgin olive oil and seasoned with nutritional yeast, garlic powder, dried ground sage, salt, and a little pepper. Delicious, crunchy and salty. And not all that bad for you.
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iāll be right over with a movie! 
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Sure. Hope itās a good movie. And I hope you donāt mind interruptions, because the infant is due to wake up at any moment.
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Mmmmmm, delicious.
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You made my daughter lol.
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