Tis the most wonderful time of the year

17th Dec - Gingerbread House

This will make enough for a small gingerbread house. The key is to have a good stencil. You can down load lots from the internet, or if you are brave you can even make your own. Your house can also be as simple or complex as you want… it doesn’t even have to be a house.

I chose a simple one. Four walls and a roof, but I cheekily added some stain glass with some melted boiled sweets. I’m currently waiting for it to set into position and I will finish decorating tomorrow.

The ingredients for the gingerbread:
250g of unsalted butter
200g of muscovado sugar
7 tbsp of golden syrup
600g of plain flour
2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
4 tsp of ground ginger

You can choose anything to decorate the house: sweets, nuts, chocolate, icing sugar… I’m going with:
2 egg white
500g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
Glacier mints or any transparent boiled sweet
Chocolate buttons for the roof
Chocolate fingers for the wall panels and door
Smarties and gumdrops for extra decoration
A flake for the chimney

How to make:
Heat oven to 200C (fan oven 180C), or gas mark 6.
Melt the butter, sugar, and syrup.
Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger, and then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough.
Roll out a quarter of the dough to about a half a centimetre. Place your first template on top of the dough and cut out one of the sections, then slide the gingerbread onto a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough until you have the walls and roof panels.
If you have cut out shapes for you windows pop in a few transparent mints (clear or coloured) into the gaps; these will melt and look like glass.
Bake for for 12 mins or until firm and just a little darker at the edges.
Cool for a few mins to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges.
Leave to cool completely.
Mix the egg whites with the sifted icing sugar to make a thick, smooth icing.
Using a medium nozzle and piping bag join the walls together; pipe generous ribbons of icing along the wall edges.
Place a small bowl, or something similar, on the inside to help support the walls and allow to dry for a couple of hours.
Remove the supports once the panels are dry, then fix the roof panels on.
Let it dry completely – I leave it overnight.

To decorate:
Pipe ribbons of icing along roof in several rows and gently add the chocolate buttons; you may need to dab the back of each button to help them stick.
Run the piping along the join at the top and stick gumdrops/tinytots into place.
Using icing stick the smarties sweets around the edges of the windows and door.
Pipe icing on the back of the chocolate fingers as well, and stick them to the walls of the house – side ways.
Use three, upright, for the door.
Cut a flake on an angle and then fix with icing to make a chimney. Pipe a little icing around the top.
Dust the roof with icing sugar.
Lay a winding path of sweets, and fix gingerbread trees around and about using blobs of icing.
Your gingerbread house about a week but will last a lot longer.

Tip:
If the dough won’t quite come together, add a tiny splash of water.
Roll the dough out on baking paper this will make it easier to slide onto the baking sheet.
Make trees and people from any leftover dough to help decorate your sculpture
You may need to hold the roof in place for few minutes until the icing starts to dry.
Be creative!!!

Merry Blogmas