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Thank you so much for that insight! I think I might scrap the cream and perhaps go with a traditional jam and buttercream. That will make things easier! Or do a buttercream crumb coat as a shield as you suggest. That will give the icing something to stick to!

I have put fondant cakes in the fridge without a problem before. But not in the freezer - the condensation when it came out of the freezer made the fondant so moist it looked like it was melting off the cake., My concern however would be the use of cream with fondant - the water in the cream may be too moist, unless you provide a barrier between the fondant and cream. Between the layers you could use a circle of buttercream or ganache around the edge of the filling.

Hi Anne, Sorry for asking a baking question here, but I keep getting mixed answers on the internet... I am hoping to get my 4th Dan blackbelt in Taekwondo in the next few weeks, and was going to make a 'blackbelt cake' to celebrate with my colleagues. I was going to fill it with lemon curd and maybe cream, and cover it in white fondant with a 'blackbelt' made of black fondant along the middle. The addition of cream suggests I would need to refrigerate, but I am not sure if you can put a cake with fondant icing in the fridge... some people say it will make the icing dry out and crack. Others that it will go most and soggy. Do you know what is the best thing to do? Perhaps just leave the cream out? I am in the UK so it isn't particularly warm at the minute, so could leave it in the porch?

My husband bought your cookbook for me for Christmas. Are you still signing nameplates and sending them?

"Schlaraffenland" this is my new favourite word. Thank you for the research, its very interesting.

Nathan Hand

There are a few versions going around, but some distribute a modernised version of the poem. This version here compares the original poem with its original spelling with the updated version. One thing I didn't know before: It appears that he called the place "Schlauraffenlant", http://www.wispor.de/w-g-sach.htm And this might be the first or at least one of the earliest publications of the poem: http://www.zeno.org/nid/20004314824 (or direct link to the image: http://images.zeno.org/Kunstwerke/I/big/HL61083a.jpg) It looks a bit like a gingerbread house, doesn't it? The linked page says that it's a copy or reprint of an earlier woodcut from around 1530, now lost. The copy can be found at the Albertina museum in Vienna. The woodcut itself mentions Wolfgang Strauch as the artist, but the page notes that two historians (Röttinger and Geisberg) attribute the woodcut to Erhard Schoen. I found one source that said Erhard Schoen created the woodcut and Wolfgang Strauch published it. In any case: All three guys, Hans Sachs, Wolfgang Strauch and Erhard Schoen, have one thing in common: They are all from Nuremberg, which gives us the connection to Lebkuchen. I've also found that the Johann Fischart mentioned the Schlaraffenland (or Schlauraffenland) in his book "Affentheurlich Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung" (Adventurous and monstrous historical fiction). It was published in 1575, so a couple of years after Hans Sachs' poem and has a very similar description of the land, but now the walls are made out of gingerbread, too: "I can no longer stay in this country; the air drives me into drowsiness, three miles behind Christmas, there are the gingerbread walls, roast pork bars, Malvasia fountains". (Original text says: "In dem Land kan ich nicht meh bleiben, der lufft thut mich in Schlauraffen treiben, drey meil hinder Weihenacht, da seind die Lebkuchenwänd, Schweinepratentröm, Malvasirpronnen" http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Fischart,+Johann/Roman/Geschichtklitterung/Das+8.+Capitel) (Note: Fischart based his story on "Gargantua" by the French author François Rabelais. That novel was published in 1534 and is a part of a series called "Les Cinq livres des faits et dits de Gargantua et Pantagruel" ("The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel"). However, Fischart's book is just loosely based on Gargantua with loose translations and a lot of added content. The Schlaraffenland part can't be found in Rabelais' work. ) However, all that said: Hans Sachs might not be the earliest source that mentions some sort of gingerbread house. While I was tracking down the original publication of Hans Sachs' poem, I found a book on Google Books that was published by A. L. Stiefel in 1894. He credits "H. Hoffmann" and "Wackernagel" as possible sources for Hans Sachs. Both have similar poems that mention that doors, walls and the whole house was made out of Lebkuchen. Stiefel mentions that these two poems were found in prints from the 17th century, which would mean that they copied Hans Sachs. But he argues, that they must have been written earlier. For example, he thinks that if they copied Hans Sachs, they would have copied some of the better parts of Hans Sachs' poem (e.g. the 3 miles behind Christmas). He also points to other popular depictions of the Schlaraffenland in the medieval age that are present in the other two poems, but not in Sachs' version. It mentions the French Fabliau de Cocagne (published around 1250) as an example, but I don't think they came up with gingerbread house. They have their version of the Schlaraffenland, but the houses are made of fish. ("«De bars, de saumons et d’aloses, Sont les murs de toutes les maisons ; Les chevrons sont d’esturgeons," or translated: “Of bass, salmon and shad, Are the walls of all houses; The rafters are made of sturgeon,") But the Dutch "Dit is van dat edele land van Cockaengen" from the 15th century might actually be the first source of a house that used a least some sort of gingerbread: https://www.verhalenbank.nl/items/show/12564 That poem uses fish for their doors and windows, too. But the beams are made out of "boterweggen" (translates into butter roads...) and the floor boards in teh attack are made of clear "peperkoeck", which translates into pepper cake, but is gingerbread. The German Pfefferkuchen is a synonym for Lebkuchen. The story of Hänsel und Gretel was turned into a song, which most Germans probably know and it calls the house a Pfefferkuchenhaus. But back to Hans Sachs. I'm not sure if it can be considered confirmed that he ripped off his poem. I didn't find a lot of sources that back up that claim. I found another one, but that referred to the book by A. L. Stiefel and didn't add any of its own research. Another one said that poetry wasn't so much about your own inventions anyways and more about rearranging things. So there is a chance that he might have copied other poems, the Schlaraffenland itself was definitely not his invention and the Dutch definitely had gingerbread in their house before his poem was published. But I think he's been a crucial factor in making it popular. I found a source that called Hans Sachs the "most widely read German-language author alongside Martin Luther". The Brothers Grimm must have been huge fans of him. Their lesser known fairytale "The old man made young again" is based on Sachs' work "Der affen ursprueng". Their story "Eve's various children" is based on Sachs' " Die ungleichen Kinder der Eva".

Thanks Christian, That's awesome. Do you have a link to the original poem in german? Or name of the book it would be in?

From what I've found, the gingerbread house might have its roots in the medieval version of Candy Land: the Cockaigne or as Germans call it: Schlaraffenland (which translates into lazy monkey land) - the land where people live in abundance and where the food just flies into your month, hence why everyone is so lazy. Hans Sachs wrote a poem about the Schlaraffenland, which was published in 1530 and even has a reference to Christmas. Because according to the poem, the Schlaraffenland "lies three miles beyond Christmas." A couple of lines later, the poet describes the houses: "The houses are covered with flat cakes, Gingerbread the front door and store, the floorboards and walls of bacon cake, the beams of roast pork send." So the Gingerbread house as we (and the Brothers Grimm) know it, might have very well been developed from that... eventually replacing the savoury ingredients with sweet ingredients and more gingerbread. A translation can be found here: https://harpers.org/2008/07/hans-sachss-schlaraffenland/ The page also shows a painting by the Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It's called "Das Schlaraffenland" and is from 1567. You can see the flat cakes on the building in the top left corner. It deals with what happens when you become lazy and just eat all the time. He is also the artist of an older painting called "Netherlandish Proverbs" from 1559, which apparently depicts the proverb "The roof is covered with flat cakes", meaning: there is abundance.