Thank you Hilda! I was great. I had forgotten how much I hate artificial cherry flavoured life savers. This is now my gingerbread go to recipe. You can still check out how I decorated the gingerbread house I made in 2014, at the bottom of this post (after the recipe). And watch videos demonstrating recipe prep and cooking techniques. Hello, I am in the process of making your ginger bread house. Gingerbread made from extra dough are crunchy but good dipped if coffee or tea! Bake the gingerbread house pieces for 12-15 minutes, until they have hardened and I used TWO batches of the royal icing for this entire gingerbread house. You can make more of the dusting flour (you will need more) as you need it (optional). 10 ratings 4.8 out of 5 star rating. The first time I made a gingerbread house we didn’t finish it until way past midnight because we tried to get it all done in one night. Tips For Making a Gingerbread House Fun Cooking Activities for Kids Your Step-By-Step Guide on Decorating Christmas Cookies 26 Winter Dishes and Holiday Treats for Kids 15 Adorable Ideas for Decorating a Gingerbread House How to Make a Gingerbread House From Scratch Mille-Feuille: … Fabulous, Ani! Will be saving for years to come! Combine your egg whites, sifted powdered sugar, and cream of tartar in the bowl of your stand … Join my FREE recipe challenge to receive new recipes and dinner ideas straight to your inbox! Elise says “The house can sit (keep it in a cool place) for 5 days. It’s best to chill the dough for 30 minutes before pressing into the molds. What a fun family experience. I found this icing hard to harden but otherwise it’s great, Do I need to store the house in the fridge at any point if I plan on eating it later? You can also use pasteurized dried or liquid egg whites. We made a gingerbread house and about a dozen cookies as well. (Longer for larger pieces like the roof or walls). Aluminum foil 6. Rolling pin 4. 3 Mortar in the roof with royal icing: Once the royal icing has dried enough so that the base structure is solid, you can go to work on the roof. I love seeing what you’ve made! The roof pieces are a rectangular shaped. This recipe was better than I could have imagined! I’m so glad everyone enjoyed the gingerbread house! Hi everybody, had anyone experimented with adding less sugar or no sugar at all (for the dough part)? Patience young grasshopper, patience! Remove one dough disc and then remove the plastic wrap. Aw Thank you Julie!! If you don't have a pastry bag, you can make your own with a re-sealable plastic freezer bag, just cut off the tip (a small cut) of one of the corners of the bag. Just a suggestion. If it sticks to either your rolling pin or the rolling surface, dust with more flour. You do not want to incorporate too much air. When I went to make the cuts, the piece broke. I’ve made several gingerbread houses in my day, but they were a bit more rustic. , I first made this gingerbread house in 2014. The outside was strong and slightly hard while the inside was soft. And it tasted delicious. Thank you! Thanks! Hi Steph, the house is fine sitting overnight or longer. Cut dough into four equal pieces, and use your hands to mold each piece into a thick rectangle, as best as possible. This took lots of recipe testing but it was worth it because it’s perfect for me now! Stir & Knead for 15 minutes - Add in the flour and stir until just combined, then turn the dough out … Pipe icing along the edges of the house where it meets the base. . Thank you Loretta! Dust the paper lightly with flour. Learn how your comment data is processed. Stir in margarine till melted. They taste too much like cough syrup. It tastes great, and holds up really well for the structure. Thank you for this recipe and the detailed description of how to put the house together! We have already decided that this is going to be a holiday tradition for us that we can build some fun memories around in the years to come! Hi Elena, are you wanting to use calorie-free sugar replacers, or simply reduce the overall amount of sweetener? This was a disaster. We took photos and videos of it for 30 min and then we could not stop eating the ginger bread. For the dusting flour - mix the flour and spices together and use this to dust the surface you will be rolling the cookies on. 2nd portion - front and back. Place the cookies on a cookie tray (lined with parchment paper) with 1 1/2 inches of space between them. Here’s an article that shows how different the taste and texture of a dough is when using blackstrap molasses. :). The 4 cut outs are for the chimney. Have fun with your doubtlessly tasty gingerbread house! Hi Afton I’m so glad that the gingerbread house came out well It’s available for pre order AND there’s a giveaway too! If they lost some of their shape transferring to the baking sheet, straighten out the edges (see my video above). I hope that helps! Yes, the house can sit (keep it in a cool place) for 5 days. Carefully arrange gingerbread house shapes onto prepared baking sheets, about 3 inches apart. You'll want to give yourself several days to make a typical gingerbread house from scratch so you'll have time to make, cut, and bake the dough; to assemble the house and let it dry; and finally to decorate. You have some lovely details in this house, which really make it stand out. You may have to look for a type of molasses that’s recommended for baking. Create and Cut Out Pattern Pieces. ‍♀️ This is also my very first time baking and making a gingerbread house. She favours white icing for her embroidery Make sure to flip the dough over half way through to smoothly and evenly roll it out. We used the leftover dough from the house to make gingerbread cookies. Currently making this recipe. We could’ve used some help finishing it! However, I only gave it four stars because I find the molasses taste to be too potent. Roll and bake the gingerbread in the evening. You can definitely have multiple colors of royal icing, but I kept it mostly white (and I left out the chimney from the 2014 version of my gingerbread house too). Depending on how soft the dough is, you may need to use scissors to cut the parchment paper. Make sure to add only a little water at a time when you do this. Looking for more recipes?Sign up for my free recipe newsletter to get new recipes in your inbox each week! Our family had never made gingerbread cookies let alone a gingerbread house…. Recipe: Gingerbread House Preparing the Walls Piping and Decorating Assembling the House Choose Your Style Email Share on Pinterest Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. 3 Add more powdered sugar, beat to stiff peaks: Add the remaining 1 1/3 cup of powdered sugar to the sugar egg mixture. Cut into a 10cm x 12cm rectangle with a 6cm-long triangle on 1 end to form a pitched roof, reserving excess. Pour the butter mixture and the milk into the mixing bowl with the flour. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Let the house stand for at least an hour, and preferably 8 hours before decorating. You will have to stick just two walls together first, and follow that with each section every hour or so. Create a gingerbread house pattern by cutting out pieces of stiff … 5 Items Magazine subscription – save 32% and get a three-tier steamer worth £44.99 Get ready for the festive season with a gingerbread house. I suggest you wrote the 1st instruction as “In a large bowl mix dry ingredients (except brown sugar) or (set brown sugar side for later). This entry is great fun — my granddaughters and I made our gingerbread house last weekend . When removing from the oven, leave , I love the gingerbread house!!!! Reduce the speed to medium and add eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions. Wow is that ever one perfect looking house! Great, Justine, I’m so happy you liked it! First time making anything like this! It was more fun to renew the custom. I was more than happy to break this gingerbread house because devouring it was our goal, ha! Divide the dough into 4 portions, and flatten each into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap (see photo in post). 4 Place a dampened clean towel over the bowl of royal icing. That was my first gingerbread house – apparently deliveries of gingerbread houses are difficult at the time, so I had to make one from scratch so as not to disappoint my 6-year old daughter. Thank you for pointing that out too! 2 Roll out dough: Spread parchment paper on a large flat surface for rolling. My dough was quite crumbly after I beat it all together. I did not want to use meringue powder, so i used a different royal icing recipe though. Press the iced side piece against the edge of either the front or back pieces. Hi Lenore, sorry to hear you had a bad experience with this recipe when you were wanting to have a fun family activity. Still, there’s something exciting and quintessentially Christmassy about decorating gingerbread houses with kids and all the people you love! I used unsulphured molasses here (called Fancy molasses in Canada), and in the US and Canada, this type of unsulphered molasses is used specifically for baking, and it works perfectly for this gingerbread recipe. Next time I would put both clove and allspice although I will not make this recipe again. Have these ingredients delivered or schedule pickup SAME DAY! Hope that helps. Add powdered sugar in small amounts, mixing well on high speed after each addition. As a kid I made gingerbread cookie dough by hand and it was a giant mess, but it kept me busy and generally out of trouble. Heat the sugar, golden syrup and orange juice in a large pan … I hope to see you on Monday at 7 pm. I followed the directions exactly. Jack Frost nipping at your nose. But I mixed in a little water to thin it out as needed for decorating the cookie cut outs. A gingerbread house is an edible structure crafted in miniature, built from gingerbread pieces, and decorated with various confections, such as shaped fondant or marzipan, piped icing, marshmallows, sprinkles, and peppermint candies.Gingerbread houses can be simple constructions or incredibly ornate—from single-story cabins to elaborate mansions and wintery town squares. I don’t eat them, but my kid will! My food is a reflection of those amazing experiences! . Plus the formatting of this website and recipe was so easy an aesthetic to use. I was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in New Zealand and lived in Australia, and then the US, before moving to Canada in 2019! Just wondering how long it is edible in house form? Flour is the only dry ingredient for this gingerbread house recipe as we don’t want any leaven like baking powder or baking soda. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California. So I’m giving gingerbrwad a try for the forst time and didn’t realize the significant difference between molasses and unsulphered molasses. Dough, a day, bake, a day, decorate, a different day :). 5 Pipe with pastry bag or cut freezer bag: When you are ready to mortar or decorate, fill a pastry bag with the icing. From Victorian to Classic, to easy to large style templates, here are over twenty gingerbread house patterns to […] Pull up a chair! I hope that helps! My inner control freak will not let me rest otherwise. FWIW, this recipe really is best for making a gingerbread house, not cookies, IMHO. Hi Sarah! You can keep it even longer if you don’t intend to eat it. 1  Whisk together until smooth the egg whites and 1 1/3 cups of the powdered sugar. I also need more practice in terms of flooding the cookies with icing and spreading it out to make it look neater. :)I even forgot to take pictures of me “constructing” the house! Cheers, To make the front and back walls, roll out another gingerbread portion on a sheet of baking paper to a 4mm-thick disc. Lightly fluff up the flour in the container, use a cup measure to scoop up flour, then use a blunt knife to level the flour. Anita (@Tastyentertaining) builds her gingerbread houses by bonding the whole house with burnt sugar, which acts almost like a hot glue gun. https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gingerbread-house-recipe1 Add the sifted confectioner's sugar (1/3 at a time to prevent a sugar storm! Thank you so much Sadia! Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes from the leftover scraps of dough. One for the others to decorate, and the second just for me. Thank you so much! Mix on medium-high until the royal icing becomes thick and glossy. Happy Holidays! You can make it up to 3 days ahead of time. I didn’t make the icing as in the recipe. Hello! . If the rolled out dough is very soft, you may want to freeze it for an hour before cutting out the patterns. You might be okay if you cover it with plastic wrap so that none of the icing is touching any air, and just keep it in the fridge overnight. I do like decorating and love using any chance to practice! I made my first gingerbread house ever with this recipe. Keep it lightly dusted so that it doesn't stick to the surface. I’ve adjusted the instructions to hopefully make that step more clear. They came out chewy but they don’t taste like normal gingerbread. If dough is too soft, add a little more flour. It’s just brown sugar The extra s is a typo. I used drinking glasses and boxes to keep the walls straight, until the “cement” dries up. My dough won’t coagulate no matter how much flour I put in! I was doing this with 3 kids, and with 1 batch of the recipe we were able to make a house with the template provided, plus 3 smaller houses, plus a bunch of cookies! That's the way we made our gingerbread houses this year. hahaha!!! Gingerbread House Dough Recipe. Non-gingerbread-house-building-participating adults and children should be informed to keep their hands off the house as well! Royal icing is not only used for decorating, but it is the mortar that holds the gingerbread pieces together to form the house. Royal Icing Recipe for Gingerbread House 10 mins Ratings. It helps if you have two people working together to place the roof pieces on the house at the same time so that they meet easily at the top center, and extend out a little bit, forming an overhang at each end. Make sure you use the paddle attachment of your stand mixer, or mixer attachment of your hand mixer to make this royal icing. Find me on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, Instagram, Pinterest, you can split this into days! 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