A true sign that Christmas is coming is all of the Gingerbread house kits I see for sale. Sure, you could buy a gingerbread house kit from a store or…you could create a homemade gingerbread house this year.
Scary? It’s really not that difficult to make your own homemade gingerbread house. All you need is a gingerbread house recipe and the ingredients and you are on your way.
First let me say that, believe it or not there is more than one way to make gingerbread dough. The recipe that I’m giving you is the easiest one that I’ve seen.
Ingredients
Prepare Dough:Into large bowl, ,measure 3 1/2 cups flour and remaining ingredients. With mixer at low speed, beat until well mixed, constantly scraping bowl with rubber spatula. With hand, knead in remaining 2 1/2 cups flour to make a soft dough. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 hours or until dough is not sticky and is of easy kneading consistency.
Roll Dough: Keep refrigerated until ready to use. Working with half of a batch at a time on a lightly floured work surface with lightly floured hands, knead dough until smooth. Then on a greased and floured 17″ x 14″ cookie sheet, with lightly floured rolling pin roll dough to 3/16″ or 1/8″ thickness. You can use dowels ofthe same size at either side of the dough on the cookie sheet to help create a uniform thickness. (For easy rolling, place cookie sheet on a damp cloth to prevent it from slipping.)
Cut And Bake Dough: Make your pattern pieces of heavy cardboard. Lay them on the dough and using a sharp knife use as many pieces as you can from the rolled dough on your cookie sheet, leaving at least 1/2″ inch between the pieces. Remove scraps and reserve for re rolling. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (Place cookie sheet in the refrigerator if there is room while the oven preheats. Bake until golden brown and very firm when lightly touched with your finger. Remove cookie sheet from oven and cool on wire rack 5 minutes. Carefully remove the baked pieces from cookie sheet and place on wire rack to cool completely.
**hint - if any of your pieces need to be tweaked here or there…do it while the dough is still warm
Ingredients
Combine all of the dry materials with half of the water (you will add more as needed to create the right thickness). Mix for about 2-3 minutes. The icing should be thick but not too thick that it won’t pass through a decorating tip.
Now that you have baked your house pieces separately you will need to put them all together and see whatcha got. For this you will need:
You pretty much use the icing as glue and start by running a line of glue down the end of one of your house sides. Then connect that side to the front of the house. Follow this up by connecting the other side the same way. Then connect the back of the house to your two sides.
You may choose to glue the four walls of the gingerbread house to your base. After that, attach the roof using the same method as the four walls…done.
How you choose to decorate your gingerbread house is up to you. You should have some idea of what you are going to put where to ensure that everything comes out just the way you want it.
Here are some gingerbread house decorating suggestions:
If all of this baking and mixing is too much for you (you’re not alone, believe me) but you still want an original looking gingerbread house I do have a solution for you. Get a gingerbread house kit that comes with the house and the icing and then go out and buy your own candy decorations.
There is nothing funner then going into the candy isle of a store and putting your imagination to good use as you think of which candies could be used in which ways. Be creative and have fun.
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December 19th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
[...] know it’s off-topic (you can’t make this with a GT Xpress) but I just ran across this post about how to make a gingerbread house, and I thought “What better recipe to blog about for [...]