A wonderful way to start the day

I have a new favorite green smoothie for the holidays; I'm drinking it right now (I also had it yesterday; I rarely have the same green smoothie two days in a row).

It's a white chocolate mint green smoothie. It's basically a banana and greens based beverage with the addition of some mint and raw cacao butter. You must try this one. It's very refreshing.

What a wonderful way to start the day; I spent the night dreaming about the raw gingerbread house I am going to attempt to make today (all the women in my family are getting together to make the traditional ones at my mom's house; I've gotta represent with the raw version), and awoke to the smell of ginger and spice permeating throughout the house.

I prepped for this ambitious project (but don't expect anything too spectacular) last night by making the dough, cutting out the shapes and "baking" them overnight in my dehydrator. I also whipped up some icing for decorating so it could chill and thicken for today.

Liz, since you inquired about the icing recipe, I usually use Carmella's recipe for whipped cream icing on her Sunny Raw Kitchen blog. Make sure you let it set in the fridge before trying to pipe it onto the gingerbread (glad to hear you were successful), it is a little runny straight out of the blender.

I used the same recipe last night except I adjusted some of the measurements, eliminated the lemon juice (I was out of lemon) and substituted raw cacao butter for half of the coconut butter (I am running low at the moment). Sometimes you just have to "make it work" (Tim Gunn of Project Runway would be so proud; that's his catch phrase for those of you who are unfamiliar).

For the gingerbread, I made Karen Knowler's Raw Gingerbread Treats. It wasn't my original plan to use this recipe, but I was sucked in by all the buzz. It showed up on Gone Raw, the Raw Food Talk forum and Liz mentioned it in a comment. I was beginning to think I was meant to chose this recipe.

I agree with Liz; texturally they came out great, but something was off in the flavor. I think it lacks some sweetness (I'd probably use dates next time) and spice (I actually added some pumpkin pie spice and cayenne pepper, but it still wasn't enough).

I the future, I'll probably pick one of these two ginger-flavored recipes (Gingerjacks and Gingerbread Cookies), which inspired my house idea in the first place.

Here are the pieces I cut out last night. All I need to do is pack them up with the icing from the fridge and some decorations, like goji berries, pumpkin seeds, golden raisins, raw cocoa nibs and coconut flakes. Wish me luck!