Gingerbread House

Tasty and so versatile, gingerbread dough has become one of my favourite winter holiday bakes. Last year I made Gingerbread cookies 

and Gingerbread Cake

This year my gingerbread story continues with this relatively easy to make Gingerbread house, (and a hundred years old lebkuchen cookies - coming soon)  which I  adapted from the BBC's good food page.

Gingerbread House

• 250g unsalted butter
• 200g dark muscovado sugar
• 7 tbsp honey
• 600g plain flour
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  
  

  
  

  
  
  

  
• 4 tsp gingerbread spice mix (cinnamon, clove, ginger)

For icing :

1 egg white

about 250 gr icing sugar

 to decorate:

selection of sweets of your choice (optional)

Template: download from here

 Melt the butter, sugar and honey in a pan. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices into a large bowl, then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough. If it won’t come together, add a splash of water, knead the dough together and refrigerate for 1 hour ( or leave overnight).

1. Cut out the template (see above to download). Put a sheet of baking paper on your work surface and roll about one quarter of the dough to the thickness of 6.5 to 7 mm. Emboss the dough if you like, cut out one of the sections, ( cut the windows and doors ) then slide the gingerbread, still on its baking paper, onto a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, re-rolling the trimmings, until you have two side walls, a front and back wall and two roof panels. Any leftover dough can be cut into ornaments, if you like.  Preheat the oven to 200 C (180 C fan assisted oven) and  bake all the sections for 12 mins or until firm and just a little darker at the edges. Leave to cool for a few mins to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.
2. Put the egg white in a large bowl, sift in the icing sugar, then stir to make a thick, smooth icing. Spoon into a piping bag with a medium nozzle. Pipe generous amount of icing along the wall edges, one by one, to join the walls together. Use a small bowl to support the walls from the inside, then allow to dry, ideally for a few hours.
3. Once dry, remove the supports and fix the roof panels on. The angle is steep so you may need to hold these on firmly for a few mins until the icing starts to dry. Dry completely, ideally overnight. To decorate, pipe a little icing on the roof and on the door. To make the icicles, start with the nozzle at a 90-degree angle to the roof and squeeze out a pea-sized blob of icing. Keeping the pressure on, pull the nozzle down and then off – the icing will pull away, leaving a pointy trail. Dust the roof with icing sugar for a snowy effect. Lay a winding path of sweets, and fix gingerbread ornaments around and about using blobs of icing.  It will be edible for about a week but will last a lot longer.