The Gingerbread House

It's Christmas so a little baking is in order. Who had the silly idea to create a gingerbread house? Did I not say 'Lets make Christmas easy this year'.......Now there is royal icing stuck to the table and a great big mess to clean up. But hey we're a house that loves creating mess and mayhem. We will all moan about the cleaning up, vowing never to do it again but we always do. So here we go.....'How to make a Gingerbread House' for a tiny gingerbread man.

The Recipe
6 cups of plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cloves
4 tsps of cinnamon
4 tsps of ginger
200grams of butter
1 1/2 cups of dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup of golden syrup
1-2Tbsp of water

Making the Gingerbread:

• Sieve or whisk your dry ingredients in a bowl (I whisked)
• Beat the softened butter and dark brown sugar with electric beater until creamed and fluffy.
• Next beat in your eggs one at a time, then the golden syrup and water until the mixture is all blended well.
• Mix in the remaining flour I used my beater until it would do no more (couldn't find the dough hook).
• Tip it all out onto a floured board and knead well. If it's too sticky just add a little more flour.
• Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a couple of hours (I left mine overnight).
• Take out of the fridge and let the dough come back to room temperature.
• Bake 350 F or about 180 degrees Celsius for about 10-15minutes (the time will depend a lot on your oven)
• Take the gingerbread out when it is slightly brown round the edges (remember little pieces will take a shorter time to cook).

For instructions, the original recipe and how to put the gingerbread house together click here.  I didn't use their template for making a gingerbread house. I wanted something bigger, making a template of my own was way too complicated for me at this time of the year......The gingerbread house template I used you can find here.

Royal Icing
Egg whites and Icing sugar and beat....how easy is that?  It can't go wrong but it did. I have never made royal icing that way before......I needed lots of egg whites to make it soft. I must admit the gingerbread house did stick together well. But for decorating it was chaos the stuff went everywhere (so now I have a snowfall gingerbread house). I should have used the family recipe for royal icing, but too late for that now...... Decorating the gingerbread house was fun to do but someone kept pinching the lollies......

Granny's Royal Icing Recipe 

• Icing Sugar
• Can be a large amount you just adjust the lemon juice to get the consistency......
• Egg whites 1 or 2
• Lemon juice 
• Sieve icing sugar add egg whites and mix in lemon juice (strained) to required consistency.

What did the gingerbread taste like?
It was very hard on the day of baking, by the third day the gingerbread was divine....the spices were all mulled and mingled which made it really nice to eat. House of Pinheira has a really cool gingerbread house and a recipe with a difference. It uses condensed milk plus lots of spices. Take a peek at their very yummy gingerbread house.

Cookies made with left over mixture.....

The back of  the house......

The wine cork that never made it......

In memory of our year living through the earthquakes
Outside was the only place to go......

All finished it's a snow house now.......
The window is made with crushed lollipops