Gingerbread Houses
Every year I strive to make a gingerbread house for the holidays.
Sometimes I get around to it. Sometimes I don't. But I always want to.
I've used cookie cutters to make houses. I've made up my own designs. I've 'borrowed' designs from other people. I've bought books with designs in them.
This book is my favorite so far, although it has its flaws.
You can buy it here
And yes, I've even bought ready made houses, and just decorated a house.
For those of you who are inspired this year to make your own house, here's a link to a GBH cookie cutter kit that has a tried and true recipe that I've used for a gajillion years.
You can buy it new here
The cookie cutters look like this:
The kit is basic and simple, and it does a fair enough job at putting together
a decent, but simple, GBH.
Here's the recipe, slightly adjusted, and some of my notes on how to put the whole thing together.
Recipe
4 to 4 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
3 teaspoons powdered ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup Crisco
1 cup molasses
optional: clear, solid colored candies (I usually pick out three different colors -- most fav colors are red (cinnamon), green (apple), gold (butterscotch). But if you're using Jolly Ranchers, you can choose from a wider variety of colors).
Icing:
4 egg whites
3 to 4 cups of powdered sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
Directions
Melt shortening in saucepan. Add sugar and molasses and mix well. Make sure the sugar is fully dissolved. Sift the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and ginger together in a mixing bowl. Gradually stir in 3 1/2 cups of the flour. Place the dough on the counter, and knead in the remaining cup of flour little by little. Your dough may need less flour (or more) depending upon the humidity in your kitchen. Wrap your dough in plastic wrap and let the dough rest for about 15 minutes.
Unwrap your colored candies. Make a pile of each color. Place all the candies of one color in a heavy zip lock bag. Release all the air out of the bag. Place the bag on top of a dishtowel. With a hammer, bash the bajizzles out of the candies until they've been pulverized into smithereens.
Repeat with new bags for each of the separate colors of candy. Set aside.
Split the dough into three sections. I wrap up the two sections I am not currently using. With your first section, place a piece of parchment paper onto your cookie sheet, and roll the dough out into a lovely rectangle (or as close to it as you can get).
Cut 2 fronts and a back from ball #1. Cut 2 ends from ball #2. Cut roofs from ball #3. Cut chimneys from excess dough.
If you want windows & doors, feel free to use a cookie cutter (or a knife) to cut those out now. I have been known to cut the windows, but leave the dough inside the holes until the dough has baked for 7 minutes. Then, I pull the cookie sheet out of the oven, cut the windows out again, and remove inner part. Then I put the dough back in the oven for another 7 minutes. **
*If you want to have lights INSIDE your house, you will need to cut a little small arch out of the corner of one of your sides (or one of your ends) just big enough for your Christmas light cord can go through so you can plug in your lights. I've tried battery operated lights, but they always seem to run out of batteries before I'm done having people look at my house. And, since the batteries are perma-glued inside the house, it's not like you can just pop in there and change your batteries. So I just run a cord through my house, and I put the lights on a timer. The lights WILL warm up your gingerbread, making it smell amazing, but they will also making the gingerbread soften, so it might not last quite as long as if you don't add lights on the inside. If you're not doing stained glass windows, don't bother with the lights.*
Only bake one cookie sheet at a time. Trust me.
Straighten all your edges before putting the shaped/cut dough into the oven, and then trim then IMMEDIATELY after removing them from the oven. The dough will spread, so it's important to trim & straighten your edges AFTER they've been cooked.
Bake only one cookie sheet at a time so that you will have time to fuss with the edges and the windows without having to worry about the other pieces.
Bake the dough for 7 minutes, and then adjust the dough as needed, then bake for another 7 minutes.
**If you want a 'stained glass window' effect, you will be baking your dough for 7 minutes. Then remove the cookie sheet from the oven. If you haven't yet removed the window dough out from the window you previously cut, remove the window dough now. Carefully sprinkle the colored sugar dust from the smashed up candies into the cavity from the window. If you want a solid color window, only use one color. If you want more of a 'stained glass window' effect, feel free to sprinkle in different colors of candies in different sections of the window area. Or, sprinkle in a layer of gold candy dust, then sprinkle on a wee bit of color here and there for a more marbled effect. I personally fill the entire window cavity. Then I use a pastry brush to brush off any excess sugar from the surface of my gingerbread house. If you don't brush this off, you'll end up with a kind of shiny, candy coated area around the window. It's okay, but looks a bit more sloppy. After the windows are filled, simply pop the gingerbread house back in the oven for another 7 minutes. The windows should have melted by now, and the dough should be firm, but not burnt. Remove from the oven, and let the cookie cool on the cookie sheet until the candied windows have hardened completely. Then remove the GBH piece from the cookie sheet and allow the GBH piece to cool COMPLETELY before moving on to the next step.
I usually allow my cookie pieces to cool overnight, and I assemble in the morning. But hey, that's just me. You can do whatever you want to do, because you are a rockstar.
While you're waiting for your gingerbread house pieces to cool, make your frosting by whipping the ingredients together in a mixer, and placing the fluffy goodness into a piping bag. If you're not going to assemble your house until the morning, wait until the morning to make your frosting.
Prepare the surface where your Gingerbread House is going to live.
You can really assemble your gingerbread house on any number of flat surfaces. I've done so on large decorative plates, on cookie sheets, and on cardboard. My most favorite, so far, is thick white cardboard with foam between the two white boards. I buy big pieces at Office Depot (like this), cut them down so that they're about six inches larger on each side (so a FOOT larger all the way around) than my gingerbread house. I like to have a nice outdoorsy area to decorate, as well as the house itself. By using the thick white cardboard, I have a lovely 'snowy' looking backdrop. It also dusts off fairly easily, although it can show some grease stains should your GBH be a bit greasy. If you find your surface a wee bit greasy, just sprinkle with a bit of powdered sugar, and voilá, fresh snow.
To assemble:
So, I've made a million GBH over the years, and my favorite weapon of choice is the full soda can. Doesn't matter what flavor. I tend to use 7-up, because then my fav hubby can serve up mixed drinks at the GBH decorating party and he simply washes off the cans, pops them in the fridge. Anywhoooo, here's how I assemble my houses.
1. I take one side of my house (the side that doesn't have a cut hole for the Christmas lights). I use the piping bag and frost the bottom edge. I put down the piping bag. I place the frosted edge onto the white cardboard. I prop up the GBH piece with a can of soda on both sides so that the piece stands upright. Kinda like using training wheels for a the BGH piece.
2. I take the END piece of my house (the side that doesn't have a cut hole for the Christmas lights). I use the piping bag and frost the bottom edge. Then I frost the edge of the SIDE piece (the side of the house that is currently being propped up by the 2 soda cans. Then I carefully set this end piece at a 90º angle and press it up against the edge of the SIDE piece. I prop the end piece up with 1 soda can on the outside edge. So you should now have three soda cans, and both pieces should be standing erect (propped up by cans) in the shape of an L or a backwards L.
3. Then, if you want to have Christmas lights, now is the time to insert them into your house. Make sure you adjust the Christmas lights so that the cord leads outside of the house. If you made the archway for the cord in your side piece, then add the side piece now, making sure the cord goes through the archway. If you added the archway to your end piece, you can just add on the side piece now.
4. Then, I frost the bottom of the second SIDE piece. Then, making sure I know which side is to face out, and which side is to face in, I frost the outer edge of the SIDE piece that will butt right up against the END piece. I carefully set it in place, right up against the END piece, and adjust soda cans as necessary.
If you haven't yet added Christmas lights, and want to do so, add them now. Make sure that you thread your cord so that the wire goes through the little archway/cut off corner of your end piece. If you forgot to cut a corner off to make room for the cord, you CAN do it now. Just be VERY gentle. When I trim dried gingerbread house pieces, I scrape a little tiny bit at a time. I NEVER chop. You're less likely to break a piece of you just sort of scrape and scrape and scrape until the edge looks like you want/need it to, or until the little edge piece is cut off for your cord.
4. I then pipe frosting on both ends of the two sides of the house. Then, I take the last remaining end of my house, I pipe frosting on the bottom. Then, I make sure my Christmas light cord goes through the archway in my end piece. Then I press it gently up against the two sides.
I prop it up with soda cans.
Then I leave everything well enough alone for quite some time.
Depending upon the size of my house, and my eagerness to continue, I will come back in 15 minutes (or let it rest over night) to see how dry and how hard set everything has become. I usually leave this stage alone for a good couple hours. But sometimes I'm in a big hurry.
Your house should be VERY solid by now, and shouldn't wiggle or jiggle or move at all. So you should be just fine. If your house is still wriggly, I suggest WAITING until it's completely hard before putting on the roof. Or, you may end up with a bunch of roofs on the floor, as if a disastrous 9.0 earthquake has hit 1970's California. Because as we've recently seen, a 9.0 earthquake in 2018 Alaska didn't really do a whole lot to anything other than the roads. And since you're not making a gingerbread road, well, you should be just fine. Once your house is solid and ready for its roof,
REMOVE ALL SODA CANS FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.
This stage is important.
Because if you don't, you'll have a house filled with soda, and there won't be anything you can do about it until deconstruction time.
Did you double check? No soda cans? Okay. So you're good to continue.
Next up I go to the base of my house and I frost my edges of my end pieces for the roof, and I lay ONLY ONE of the roof pieces down. I borrow a friend, or a husband, or a child, to hold that piece in place. Try not to use the dog to hold the roof in place, because the dog will eat your house.
No matter how much they promise not to.
If I haven't got one of those, I try to jerryrig the soda cans to prop up the piece.
Double check to make sure all your cans are out of your house.
If not, take out all the soda cans now.
Then I frost the other two edges of the end pieces, *AND* I frost a thick layer across the top edge of the roof (the edge that is going to meet the other roof edge) and place the other roof piece in place. If I have a hubby with more than one hand, or if I have more than one hubby, or if I have a hubby and a kiddo, then I have each of them hold up a side while I put on another layer of frosting between the two roof pieces, JUST to make sure that it's all going to be secure. Adjust the roof pieces as necessary to make the gaps as minimal as possible.
Then I hold up one roof piece while hubby holds up the other roof piece, and we have a nice chat for a few minutes while everything starts to dry and set. I have tried jerryrigging up soda cans for this part, but sometimes a hubby or kiddo works best. Again, not the best job for the dog.
Then, I let the whole thing rest for a bit, or until the roof feels pretty secure, and then I'm all set!
Now, if all of this seems a bit too much of a pain in the catookus for you, they sell ready made houses, fully assembled, at Costco. For $10. Why on Earth would you go to all this hassle of making your own GBH when you can buy a ready made, fully assembled GBH?!? You could skip the whole baking the house part, and go straight for the decorating part.
But.
There are some people out there, people like you, people like me, who want to have that full gingerbread house experience, and want to make their own gingerbread house from scratch.
Maybe we're sadistic and want to make our own designs.
Or maybe we want to steal other people's designs.
Or maybe we're just nuts.
So for the rest of you who are nuts, like me, knock your socks off and make an awesome homemade GBH. Then send me a picture, so I can steal your idea for next year!
For the rest of you who just want to decorate a house, buy one from Costco. They're the best ones. Honestly. I've made ones from JoAnn's, Michael's the grocery store, and some weird little mini houses that I picked up as a kit from somewhere else. And trust me. After putting together hundreds of houses, the Costco ones are truly my favorite. And you can't beat the price!
I'll write up some decorating ideas in another blog post... along with some pictures of former homemade GBHouses from yours truly.
Meanwhile, enjoy! And happy baking!
* * * * *
For those of you anxiously awaiting book number 2, it is currently on hiatus until the holiday season has passed. I am knee-deep in holiday bliss at the moment, and Jack Diamond and his friends are just going to have to wait until January to pick up where we left off ... editing the final draft!
Meanwhile, if you *HAVEN'T* yet read Jack Diamond book number 1, you can buy it below. Click on the picture, and it'll pop you straight over to Amazon where you can buy the paperback (great stocking stuffer!) or you can buy a copy for your kindle!
Now who doesn't love to read a great murder mystery while snuggled up under the Christmas tree, cocoa in hand, fire blazing away?
* * * * *
I wrote a murder mystery! Here is the link so you can buy it:
You can buy my book in both e-book and paperback on Amazon here:
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