Gingerbread house

I just love this time of the year…. There is just something magical around Christmas time. I love the warm fuzzy feeling that goes around. 🥰
So needless to say, around Christmas time we have a lot of little traditions and one of them is making a gingerbread house.

This is a fun activity for the kids. At first we made one large gingerbread house. But you know they have their own little ways on decorating that don’t always match according to them. So, these days I make each their own house to decorate. They absolutely love it!!

We always bake a number of biscuits for the December holidays. Thinking of it now, I think this is also a bit of a tradition. I remember helping my mom in her kitchen baking all kinds of cookies during the holidays. It is nice when a tradition can be passed down. I remember her chocolate chip cookies. Still a favourite of mine… https://www.livingdelish.com/finally-the-ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookie/

Anyway, back to the gingerbread houses.I have used this recipe for a number of years now, and it has never failed me. This cookie, when baked, is nice and crispy and is full of flavour. A crispier cookie insures that your gingerbread house stands nice and firm.

From start to assembling these houses takes around 2 hours. This includes cooling time. I find that baking the houses the previous day and then decorating the next day works great. When I finish baking & cooling them, I assemble them. This way the icing can dry properly overnight. Ready for the little ones to decorate!

Hope you enjoy this recipe as much as what we do. Please share your thoughts and comments on this recipe.

Gingerbread house recipe

Makes +/- 3 small houses
Preheat your oven to 160 ˚C and grease your baking trays.

125g soft butter
125ml Brown Sugar
160 ml golden syrup
8ml Ground ginger
5ml Ground cinnamon
2ml mixed spices
5ml Bicarbonate of soda
625 ml Cake flour

Method

Beat the butter and sugar together until it’s light and fluffy. (I use an electric stand mixer to help me out.) Now stir in the syrup.

In a separate bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture while mixing on a slow speed. Keep mixing until the dough comes together and forms a ball.

On a flour surface, roll out your dough to around 4mm thickness. Use a template to cut out your shapes.
Re roll your scraps and repeat above step until you have all the walls and roof parts cut out.
A little tip. Do not cut out the windows and the door until you have transferred them to your pan. This way your house wall will keep their shape.

Now you can bake your cookies. Once baked, work quickly and trim your cookies so that the original shape is kept. The warmer the cookies the easier it would be to cut. Move your shaped cookies to a cooling rack and allow to cool.

You can now make your icing. The best icing to use is royal icing. There are many different icings, https://www.livingdelish.com/5-great-icing-types-to-try-today/ but since royal icing dries super hard it is the best to use.

Royal icing recipe

330 ml icing sugar
1 egg white
3ml Lemon juice

Method

Mix all the ingredients together until nice and fluffy, around 5 minutes. The icing should have the consistency of toothpaste.
If your icing is to stiff add a small amount of lemon juice until the correct consistency is reach.
If your icing is to runny add more icing sugar.

Assembling your gingerbread house

Glue the sides of your walls to the front and back of your house walls using some of your royal icing. Set aside for a few minutes to set. Now ice the top rim of your walls. Carefully add the roof panels one at a time. Ice the seam where the rooftop comes together and set aside to dry. The icing should dry within an hour.

And now the real fun starts. I usually get a few sweets together, some spare royal icing and let the kids have some fun.

Here are their creations. 😁