Gingerbread House Tutorial
The first step to making a gingerbread house is to pick a lovely design. When I was a little kid, I made my first gingerbread house just randomly cutting pieces, and trying to cement things together with frosting. Let's just say it was a disaster and leave it at that.
As I grew older, I bought kits at JoAnn's, Michael's, and then found Costco's kits. At the time you had to assemble them, and they were far superior to anything else out there at the time. Now the Costco houses come pre-assembled, making things much easier for the folks who just want to decorate, and don't want the hassle of baking. Because trust me, baking a house is a hassle. I understand you can buy kits at Bed Bath and Beyond now too, and that's just groovy.
The first few years of making houses, I had a cookie cutter kit like this one, making the whole process easier. If you're wanting to get your feet wet without the labor involved, give this kit a whirl.
You can also plot and plan out your own house, using cardboard or card stock (heavy paper) and trace your design onto the gingerbread while it's doughy and rolled out onto your cookie sheet. But good luck with that, because you never know if one side is going to be too long or too short, or if your roof pieces are going to work out for you. Unless you're an architect, or have a LOT of time and money for screw ups, I don't recommend this route.
What I use now is this lovely book called the Gingerbread Architect.
This book is NOT for beginners. Well, at least I would not recommend it for beginners. Put together a few kits first. Try out the cookie cutter method a few times, and then branch out into this more intermediate to advanced baker's handbook for gingerbread house designs.
The book has many house designs (with pictures), but only 3 or 4 more "traditional" gingerbread houses. Then, what really sells the book, is that in the BACK of the book, they have the DESIGNS for each of the houses. They clearly specify the size and shape of each piece that you need in order to put together the house that you want. They also include recipes for gingerbread and for the frosting cement. I haven't tried their recipes, as I'm still using the recipes that I got from my cookie cutter set, but I'm sure they're just fine. Something to keep in mind: When making such a LARGE house, you will need multiple batches of gingerbread. So expect to go through upwards of 8 or 9 cups of flour etc. when making such a large house. Like I said, making a house of this size is not for the faint of heart. I've been making houses for many years now, and it took me roughly 10 hours to make the dough, roll it out, cut out the pieces, prepare the windows, and bake each piece. Then it took me another several hours to put the whole thing together. And then decorating was another day of fun!
So if you're not intimidated by now, and are ready to jump in, read on!
So here are some step by step tips on how to make your own gingerbread house.
Pre baking tip: Before you start rolling out your dough, prepare your candy for the melted candy windows. This process always takes me a bit longer than I'd like, so I like to do it first so that the candy is ready to be inserted as soon as I need it.
Candy tip 1: I use butterscotch candies and cinnamon candies for my windows. They seem to work the best. Do NOT use the red and white candies or green/white candies that are pictured in the upper left corner. The white parts of those candies don't melt at the same rate as the other part, and they end up melting and burning, and leaving the windows non-see-through-able. So stick with the butterscotch and cinnamons. If I'm feeling colorful, I sometimes add the orange and green candies too, but only if they're "clear" candies like the butterscotch ones.
Candy tip 2: I put down a towel, then my cutting board, then I get out my hammer to begin the process. THEN, I unwind each wrapper, leaving it still IN each wrapper, but each end is unwound, and the candy is just sitting in its little packet.
Here you can see the end is unwound.
Then I smash the doozies out of the candies until all the pieces are CRUSHED as completely as possible.
Here you can see some powdered candies and some larger pieces. I would continue to smash these up until you have smaller pieces. It doesn't have to be powder, but the big chunks are too big.
Final candy tip: After I've mashed up my candies, I put them in small bowls and get out small spoons that I will later use to ladle the candies into the window holes of my gingerbread house dough. I kept all my kids' baby spoons, and that's what I use for ladling, but any small spoon would work.
Once your candy is crushed and your dough is made, you're ready to begin!
*Turn on your favorite holiday music.*
Tip #1: Don't add as much flour as anyone asks you too. You want your dough to be moist. You can always ADD in flour later when you're rolling out your dough. The ball in the bowl is darker and moister, and much easier to roll out than the lighter, drier dough.
Tip 2: Sometimes when you're rolling out your dough you need to add a bit more dough to fill in a corner. Don't worry if it looks like the picture below. Once the dough is baked, it's barely noticeable, and you'll be adding candy on top of it, so it won't matter anyway.
Tip 3: When the pieces "require" window cut outs, I usually cut out the shapes, but leave the pieces in while the dough is baking. This prevents the holes from bowing out and becoming curved windows when I wanted more straight windows.
Tip 4: When the dough is 1/2 way done, take it out of the oven. Do NOT be surprised if your lovely straight edges now are all bowed out. Simply have a ruler on hand (mine is plastic), and while the dough is lovely and hot, place your ruler on top of the dough, and cut the edges with a knife to spiffy them up again.
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| My dough looks TERRIBLE before trimming. No worries, I'll just trim things up and it'll look great in no time! |
Tip 5: Once your edges are spiffied up, it's time to remove the windows. Don't worry about this whole process taking a wee bit of time, but let's not dally either.
This is what your finished piece should look like (with straight edges and empty windows) before you add in your candy windows.
Now it's time to add in the crushed candy into the windows!!
Tip 6: When you're done adding in the crushed candy, take a pastry brush and brush off any errant crumbs from the dough. Otherwise your dough will have a shiny, sticky spot wherever the candy remained. Then pop your dough back into the oven for the remaining 6-7 minutes
Tip 7: When you take your finished piece out of the oven, the windows may be a bit bubbly. I usually shimmy shimmy the cookie sheet when it first comes out to smooth things out. You can take a small toothpick and carefully pop the larger bubbles, but be quick about it, because the candy hardens almost immediately. You don't have to worry too much about the bubbles, because they will smooth out a bit on their own.
Tip 8: I leave my dough on the cookie sheet sitting on top of a cooling rack until the dough cools COMPLETELY. Then, very carefully, I peel/pry the dough off the sheet. If things were done properly, the piece should slide off easily without any sticking. EVERY once in a while, my piece will stick, and the candy window will crack. You can see on the bottom left of this photo my little corner broke off, and the window cracked. I've never tried, but I am guessing one could probably pop the whole piece back into the oven to re-melt the candy. But I'm terrified of burning the dough, so I just leave the window cracked.
Once all the pieces have dried completely, you're ready for assembly! I usually wait an entire day between baking and assembly.
*Turn on your favorite Christmas movie and have that playing in the background while you're making your house. It provides a lovely ambiance, and helps stave off the boredom when you're stuck holding the roof pieces together.
Tip 9: Cut a piece of thick cardboard (mine has foam on the inside) that is large enough to fit your entire house. I usually lay my largest piece like this on the board to make sure it's going to be big enough.
Tip 10: Put your frosting cement into a frosting bag with a tip with a fairly large circular hole. I've kept all my plastic tips from the GBH kits I've used over the years, and use those for piping on the cement. The cement is fairly thick, and you need a fair amount of cement to keep your pieces standing. I usually place my empty bag into a tall water glass, fold over the edge, fill my bag with frosting to this point, and then pull my bag out and twist the top. Seems to be just enough frosting, and I don't get my hands all sticky.
Tip 11: I always start with the back side of the house. That way I know I'll have plenty of room for extra decorating in the front for a "yard" of sorts. Sometimes I'll put a pond, or a snowman out front. Once, when I made a gingerbread castle, I had a moat! My back yard, on the other hand, can be quite small.
First I frost the board itself, then I frost the bottom of my piece. Glue sticks well to glue.
Tip 12: Once my board is standing right where I want it to stand, I prop the piece up on either side with a full can of soda. Pick a flavor that you like so that you can drink the soda later when you're admiring your lovely home.
Tip 13: If you're going to add lights to the inside of your house, now is the time, immediately after having erected your first side of the house. Stretch the lights out the entire length of the first side, and bring the battery operated box around to the BACK side of the house.
it helps if you carve out a wee little corner piece for the cords to run through. In my case, I carved a wee tiny hole and a huge chunk came off. Sigh. I ended up cementing the piece back over the hole, then covered the cement with a piece of candy. Candy covers so many mistakes!!
Here you can see the bottom of the house is assembled with soda cans inside and out. The lights are inside, and everything is staged for the roof. I usually wait one entire day (or at least 4-6 hours) before adding on the roof.
Tip 14: Before you assemble your roof, remove all your soda cans from inside the house. In this next picture you can see the roof pieces are in place. With the roof, I put one side on, and hold it in place for several long minutes before adding in the second side. Then, once the second side is on, I, again, hold it in place for quite some time. This is a good time to focus on the Christmas movie you're watching. If your roof begins so slip, put it back in place. The goal is to have the pieces fit snuggly against each other, supporting each other, with very little gaps between.
Once my house is assembled, I let it settle for several hours, or sometimes an entire day before adding on the extra touches. Here, I assembled the porch.
Tip 15: If you're going to use candy canes for porch supports, make sure you have multiple candy canes for back ups, in case one of the canes breaks. Carefully, slowly, carefully saw the cane part of the candy cane off, to leave the remaining stick. I have seen candy cane sticks before, but they're usually quite thick and wouldn't work effectively for this size of a porch. Make sure all of your candy canes are the same length, or your porch will either sag in the middle or bow out in the middle, neither alternative is ideal.
In this house design, we get a chimney. The chimney has thin side pieces to make it stand away from the side of the house. LOVE this effect!!
Tip 16: If you're going to assemble a chimney like this, I flip the chimney piece onto its back and attach the thin side pieces (so that the whole thing looks like a bug with its legs sticking out in the air). Then when it's time to attach it to the house, it's easy to take the hole thing and cement it as one piece to the side of the house, tipping the chimney slightly so that it tucks gently under the roof eave.
Tip 17: For my brick effect, I use Wrigley's Big Red cinnamon hot gum. Smells great, works great, and I love the white sugar powder and the "pattern" on the gum as nice brick texture. I cut the gum into thin slices, and then I cut 1/2 those pieces in half to make them short and thin.
Tip 18: I have found the best looking chimneys seem to be the ones when I frost a small section completely on the roof, and then I simply place the bricks onto the frosting. The extra white frosting looks like mortar. When I frost the individual bricks, sometimes the brown gingerbread shows through, and doesn't look as great.
Now your house is naked and ready for decorating!!!
I usually pipe along the side, then piece by piece I hand place the candy along the edges of my house.
Tip 19: This year I wanted a cedar shake roof. So I used Golden Grahams. I frosted a section of the roof, added a layer of the grahams. Then I put a line of frosting on the TOP part of the grahams (to secure the next shingle layer), and I installed the next row of grahams.
I frost along the edges of each of my windows, along the edges of the house, and along each of the eaves with small candies. They're usually Wilton candies. You can buy these at JoAnn's or Michael's. I buy mine at Blake's Decorette shop. I use only my fingers, but some people prefer to place their candies using tweezers. Some people also prefer to pipe in decorations and designs, but my piping skills just simply aren't up to snuff.
Along the bottom side of the house I decorate with larger candies. I usually have a wreath or two on my house, but I was in a bit of a rush. In the past I have also decorated the roof top with candies, I've had a candy Santa popping out of (or into!) the chimney. I've had friends who've put cotton candy puffs out of their chimneys. There are so many possibilities!
I also decorate the front yard with something. Sometimes I frost a tree (using an upside down ice cream cone). Sometimes I make snowmen with either powdered donuts or powdered donut holes. Sometimes I make a pond using candy rocks and filling the pond with aqua blue jello so that it jiggles and looks like water, with a gummy fish or two inside.
There are so many possibilities!!! Buying candy in the bulk section makes things less expensive, but if you're looking for a specific kind of candy or a specific color, head to your local cake decorating store, your local candy shop, or peruse the aisles of your grocery store to see what you can find!!
And have fun!
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