I’ve always dreamed about building my own house and decorating it in a sweet way. This weekend we all got into designing, building and decorating and didn’t even have to take a loan to build the Gingerbread house of our dreams:
It’s a very eco-friendly house that even has solar panels on the roof! You can download the .pdf template of the Gingerbread house pieces from here:
[download id=”21″]
I used a variation of the gingerbread cookies recipe Bakerella posted and the royal icing recipe from allrecipes.com:
Ingredients House Dough
- 5 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoons ginger
- 3 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon cloves
- 1 cup butter, slightly soft
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup molasses
- 1/2 cup honey
Ingredients Royal Icing for Gingerbread House
- 3 tablespoons meringue powder
- 4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
- 6 tablespoons water
Let’s get to baking our house pieces. Print and cut out the template for guidance. Then get your cookie sheets lined with baking paper and get two large bowls out.
1. Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Sift together flour, salt, spices and baking soda in a separate bowl.
2. Add eggs, molasses and honey until well combined.
3. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and combine until you get a dough lump, use your hands toward the end to form 2-3 dough balls.
4. Wrap the dough balls in saran wrap and let them sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
Meanwhile go to the store and get your decorations 😉
5. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C and flour a surface and rolling pin, then start rolling out your dough to roughly 1/4 of an inch. See which template shape fits best and start tracing it around the edged with a knife, don’t cut it all the way down yet, just mark the area.
6. Then use a pizza cutter to cut out the large pieces and use a sharp kitchen knife for the details (door, windows).
7. Bake about 2 pieces at a time for 9-10 minutes in the 350F oven. Remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes, then gently move the elements to a cooling rack.
8. Repeat this until you have all your pieces baked and cooled.
9. Now on to the icing: Add all ingredients for the icing (powdered sugar, meringue powder and water) to a mixing bowl and whip until well combined.
10. Place a large round tip on a piping bag and fill it with about a 3/4 cup of icing. Place a wet dish towel over your icing bowl to keep it from drying out.
11. Get an assistant or some canned goods to help you prop up the sides of the house. Also get a hard piece of card board or a cutting board that will host you house on it 🙂
12. Ice the bottom of the first side piece and press it onto the board, while holding it up ice the right side of it. Then take the wall piece that will go onto the piece we just put down and ice it’s bottom. Press the new piece onto the board and against the iced side of the wall we put down first. Have your assistant hold it in place and repeat the steps until all walls of the house are together.
13. Let this rest for a little while and unpack your decorations, place them in bowls ect.
14. Ice the outside edges of the roof pieces and gently press them on top of the walls, add a thick icing snake on top to seal it the roof (we don’t want it to rain into our house).
15. Let this sit to dry a little bit, meanwhile get a second piping bag ready with a small round tip, so you can create fine decorations and fill it up with some more icing.
(We like pink… what can I say)
16. Add big or small dollops of icing on the walls and roof depending on the size of deco element you want to put on there. Trace the windows and door with with a fine line of icing and pipe a fancy pattern on your roof, or don’t and plaster it with sour patches, like we did 😉
Once everything has dried over night, the icing will be rock hard and you can easily transport it to its final presentation place.
Have fun!
Wy says
that looks so yummy! 🙂
Dani says
It was so much fun to make, but the icing turns rock solid, so I don’t think we will actually eat it…lol
sara Stewart says
I can’t get the link to the pdf to work 🙁
Dani says
Let me see what’s up there…sorry about that