Making a Gingerbread House
Six Tips for This Fun and Low Stress Holiday Baking Project
Making a gingerbread house is a great idea, especially if you keep it simple. Christmas can be memorable and more fun when you dial down the stress level.
If you’ve ever been enchanted by gingerbread houses and thought it was too much trouble to make one, a quirky creation of your own might be easier than you think. A Christmas tradition in many homes, making a gingerbread house is a great way to spend time with the kids around the holidays.
Keep Your Holiday Project Simple
This isn't a home cooking network competition, so keep it simple. There are packaged kits available as well as cheats like preformed bases that will make your gingerbread project more fun than formidable.
Gingerbread Template and Recipe
Start with a gingerbread recipe, an icing recipe, and a structure. You'll be baking the gingerbread using a template for the walls and roof. The frosting is the glue that will hold you gingerbread house together, and decorations like gumdrops, pretzels, and candy canes will give it enough charm to distract attention from any flaws. I have provided a link to a good recipe for gingerbread and frosting as well as a basic template, although there are probably thousands available.
Make Sure Your Oven Is Reliable
You don't want to burn the edges of your gingerbread pieces, so try calibrating your oven by testing the temperature with an oven thermometer before you begin. If you think your oven cooks unevenly, rotate the cookie sheet halfway through the baking process.
Royal Icing
The trickiest part of making your gingerbread house is putting it all together, and for that you will need the gingerbread equivalent of glue...icing.
Royal icing starts to dry as it is exposed to the air, so once you have a good consistency, keep it covered. If it starts to get too thick, add a little water at a time until it gets back to a consistency that works for you.
To apply icing, you will need a pastry bag. In a pinch you can use a freezer or storage bag in which you have cut a small hole in one bottom corner. A tip placed at the open end of the bag from the inside will produce a decorative pattern as you lay a bead of icing.
Gingerbread House Assembly
As you start to assemble your pieces, put them together on a sturdy base, like your cookie sheet or a decorative platter. Many a gingerbread house has come crashing down because it was built on an unstable base, so do a little planning. Cardboard isn’t the best choice unless it’s very thick and strong. While you assemble the gingerbread walls, lean them against cans from your cupboard to hold them upright.
Variety in Gingerbread Decoration
One of the key ingredients in having a great time building a gingerbread house is having a variety of decorations to trim it with. Buying bulk candy, where you can purchase as much or as little as you want, makes it easy to get a few pieces of lots of different candy varieties.
The traditional gingerbread house is completely edible, so look around for unexpected additions that have great texture but aren't necessarily sweet. Breakfast cereal makes great roofing shingles, and some crackers can be fashioned into realistic shutters and doors.
If you have competitive children in your household, you might consider resizing the template you are using in order to have each child make his own smaller gingerbread house. This saves on decorating arguments, and each child can make his gingerbread house as unique as he wants.
Turn a rainy winter weekend into a wonderful memory by making a gingerbread house at your house.
