Handmade Holidays: heidikins’ Gingerbread House

heidikins is one of my favorite “started as an online friend, now I’ve hung out with you in real life and I LOVE YOU” people. (Go ahead, say that five times fast.) When she announced elsewhere that she’d just completed her annual gingerbread house, I grew weak in the knees and begged her to share her method. She’s totally lovely, and obliged. And now, may I present the lovely heidikins!

Hi there, heidikins here. Abby is nice enough to let me hijack her blog for the day and blather on about some one of my favorite Christmas traditions, gingerbread houses. Now, in my family gingerbread is a really big deal. A big deal. I started making gingerbread houses when I was a toddler and as I got older they got more and more elaborate. As in, St. Basil’s Cathedral elaborate. Like I said, gingerbread is a big deal around here.

Don’t worry, this is not a tutorial to make St. Basil’s Cathedral out of gingerbread in twelve easy steps. Relax. But I will teach you how to make a simple gingerbread house, it’s really not that difficult. I promise.

First, you need to mix up your gingerbread, this is for one batch which makes one house.

Gingerbread House Recipe:
2 3/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ginger
1 TB baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. oil*
2/3 c. molasses*
1 egg

*Use one measuring cup for both the oil and molasses; measure the oil first so it will coat the inside of the measuring cup, then the molasses will pour out much, much easier.

Sift dry ingredients together, add sugar, oil, molasses and egg. Mix together in an electric mixer until a sturdy dough forms, roll the dough into a ball, place in a zip-lock bag and chill in freezer for 30 minutes or in the fridge overnight.

Press into greased baking sheet. Make sure to grease it really well, especially the corners; by liberal with the Pam. Break the gingerbread into several different pieces (this is the part I forgot to photograph) and then you’ll press it down into the pan in an even layer. This takes a little elbow grease, but it is crucial.

Press the gingerbread flat with your fingers, the trick is you want to get it as flat as possible so you don’t have bubbly walls or a wrinkled roof.

Spread a piece of plastic wrap over the gingerbread and press it flat with a spatula, or a rolling pin, or whatever else you can find. Make it flat, people. That’s the key.

Bake it for 30 minutes at 300 degrees. Now here’s the catch–you must have your pattern pieces cut out before your gingerbread gets out of the oven. If you wait more than a few minutes it will harden and won’t be cut without breaking.

Click here to download a pdf of the pattern!

Because gingerbread is a BIG THING at my house, instead of using paper cutouts we have copper cookie cutter things. But, print the pattern out onto a manilla folder, make sure you have doubles of the roof and walls and you are good to go.

Make sure to lay out your pieces before you start cutting, there are only a few ways they will all fit onto a cookie sheet. Cut those babies out with a small knife, you need to work quickly, ignore burning fingertips, just keep cutting.

Let these cool for about a half hour so they harden. Then it’s time to decorate.

Royal Icing Recipe:
3 egg whites
2 lbs. powdered sugar
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar (don’t skip this, it’s important for consistency, or something.)

Beat to your hearts content with a hand mixer until it becomes stiff. If it’s too thick add a teaspoon of water and beat some more. Spoon the frosting into a frosting bag. (If you don’t have a frosting bag you can use a heavy-duty zip-lock with a teeny bit of the corner snipped off.)

I usually use a cardboard cake-base-thingies for my gingerbread house base, covered in tin-foil. You can buy these in packages, or just stop by the bakery and ask them for one. It is about a thousand times easier to decorate flat pieces than to decorate the house after it’s constructed.

This is a pretty simple house, my only candy was M&M’s. You can use all sorts of things; jolly ranchers make good borders, pieces of gum are excellent shutters, caramels cut into pieces make excellent bricks, pretzels make excellent fences and tootsie rolls will make a cute woodpile. Get creative. Or just stick with M&M’s.

Putting together your house usually takes three or four hands, so find someone to help you out. It’s easiest to put a line of frosting of each piece, and then on the edges, connect the pieces and let them sit for a few seconds until the frosting hardens enough to hold up the weight of the house.

Add the back and other wall the same way. Let this sit and get hard for another few minutes. Now it’s time to put on your roof. Slather the peaked front/back pieces of the house with frosting and make sure you have something to put on the roofline (licorice, candy cane, whatever). Press the roof pieces down onto the frosting and hold it until it dries–this is the part that takes some extra hands–and put the supporting roofline piece (licorice/candy cane) in place.

Voila! Gingerbread house!