Christmas Gingerbread House - How To Step By Step!

This is a step by step guide to making and building a gingerbread house ready for Christmas. I would allow yourself 2 days to do this to allow it to set in between steps.

I'm using a lovely cutter set by Lakeland. Lakeland also do lovely gingerbread / chocolate silicone mould sets which I also own and will do another blog post on this later.

So are we ready....

Ingredients

180g Butter

125g Brown Sugar

300g Golden Syrup

500g Plain Flour

1/4 Tsp Salt

1 Tbsp Ground Ginger

1/2 Tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda

Extra flour for rolling

Method

1..In a saucepan melt the butter, syrup and brown sugar

2..In a mixer add all the other dry ingredients and give a stir, add the melted ingredients from the pan and blend to a thick dough.

3..At this point I like to pop the dough into the fridge for 30minutes just to chill. Whilst the dough chills turn the oven on to 170oC.

4..Flour the work surface and all the cutters and then following your cutter guide. Roll out the dough and cut all the pieces out and pop on to a baking tray.

5..Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and firm to the touch.

6..Carefully take each house piece and pop onto a baking tray to cool.

How To Build The house

Using Royal Icing (follow the instructions on the packet) 

It has to be royal icing as it sets hard like an edible glue. 

Use a pretty cake stand or cake board depending on the size of your house.

1..Pipe icing along the base of one of the side panels and use a can or teacup to hold the piece in place. 

2..Next pipe icing along the front panel along the bottom and up one of the sides that attaches to the side panel... prop up again with another tea cup.

3..Next repeat with the other side and then the back of the house. 

4..Leave the base of the house to set firm for about 30 minutes.

5..Remove all the teacups.

6..Next pipe along the roof of the houses and hold them in place for a few minutes. (this can be tricky so have patience)

7..Again leave the whole house to dry for another 30 minutes.

8..Pipe along any extra pieces, with theses cutters there are windows, door and a chimney to attach.

9..Pipe the extra characters gingerbread girl, boy, snowman, tree (or whatever characters you are adding)

10..Now my tip is to leave it for the rest of the day,let it completely set.

Following Day

1..Using royal icing again decorate the house with all your choice of sweets and chocolates. The more the merrier (it is Christmas after all)

2..I like to also add a sprinkle of icing sugar like snow over the house.

Happy Baking

Kelly

x x x