How to make a gingerbread house

Making a gingerbread house is a german tradition and a wonderful thing to do with your kids. My daughter loves it!

And if it doesn't come out nicely, you can always eat it :-).

Here is a tutorial on how we did it:

You need to get the ingredients for the dough, the icing and some things to decorate the houses. We used smarties, little silver pearls, wafers, chocolate sprinkles and colorful sprinkles.

To make the dough for two houses, use:

720 g flour (sieved), this is about 3 cups
12 ml baking powder, about 0,4 ounces
20 ml Lebkuchen spice, this is about 0,7 ounces (if you can't get that, use 10 ml ground cinnamon, 5 ml dried ground ginger and 5 ml mixed spices)

Mix these ingredients together in a bowl

Then heat up 250 g golden syrup (about 1 cup), 400 g sugar (1,7 cups) and 60 g (about 2 ounces) butter in a saucepan.
Remove from heat and stir in 60 ml (2 ounces) of lemon juice.

Once it has cooled slightly, stir one third of the flour mix into the syrup mix and add one large egg.
Stir, then add the rest of the flour mix and start kneading the dough until it is elastic.

Divide it in two halves and roll each one out on a baking sheet (didn't have any so I used alu foil, worked just as well). Try and get it as even and smooth as possible

Bake the two sheets for 20 to 30 minutes at 160 degrees Celsius (325 degrees Fahrenheit) until golden with slightly brown edges

In the meantime, make a template for the houses

The small house is 9 cm wide (3.5 inches) and 7 cm high (2.8 inches)
You will need to of those pieces, one with door and window cut out.
You will also need two side pieces of 6.5 cm (2.6 inches) by 7 cm (2.8 inches)  and two roof pieces measuring 7.5 cm (3 inches) by 8 cm (3.1 inches)

For the large house, the width is 9 cm (3.5 inches) and the height 11 cm (4.3 inches).
Cut out two pieces, one with door and windows cut out.
You need two side pieces of 6.5 cm (2.6 inches) by 11 cm (4.3 inches) and two roof pieces measuring 7.5 cm (3 inches) by 8 cm (3.1 inches)













Very important: Cut the pieces out while the dough is still warm. We forgot about that step and only cut it the next day. By then it was rock hard and very difficult to cut.
It is also a good idea to keep the pieces for the two houses separate (some more learning by doing :-) ).

 

Now it is time to make the icing. Beat 2 large egg whites until foamy. Then slowly beat in 500 g (about 2 cups) sifted icing sugar. Now add a little lemon juice until the mixture is about as thick as toothpaste. Don't make it too thin, it has to keep its shape but must be spreadable

And then the fun starts! Put some of the icing in a small plastic bag (freezer bags work fine), cut the corner off and get squeezing

Then 'glue' the decoration on with the icing

 Also use icing to glue the sides and front and back together and to hold up the roof


And here are our gingerbread houses:

 

 

 

By the way, I did finish the advent calendar (without using the christmas tree :-) ) and will show it to you next week. The tutorial will also be a guest blog on Gluesticks next Thursday.

I am linking this post to the lovely blogs mentioned on my 'link parties' page. Please check it out and visit some of them!
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