How to Make a Christmas Gingerbread House. Simple, Easy Gingerbread Recipe for a Perfect, Beautiful Gingerbread House

Making gingerbread houses can be a little intimidating if you've never made one before. Or perhaps you've baked one before, but are looking for a simpler way to make a gingerbread house. That's sort of our area of expertise.

We've created this super simple, easy gingerbread recipe, using our Gingerbread House Kit, so you can have a perfect, beautiful gingerbread house with everything you need to let your creativity flow this holiday season. Today, we'll walk you through our easy gingerbread recipe, and walk you through assembling the base of the house.

About our kit:

Our Christmas gingerbread house kit includes everything you'll need to get a delicious and beautiful gingerbread house, that you can also customize following our gingerbread house ideas.. It includes a gingerbread mix that we have perfected throughout our years of testing gingerbread recipes until we found the perfect gingerbread house recipe.

Our kit also includes ingredients to make royal icing (meringue powder), and different cookie cutters (house wall and roof forms) so that you can cut and decorate the house easily, as well as an assortment of different candies for decoration. The only things you will need are some common kitchenware items and pantry items.

Kitchenware:

• Wax paper or parchment paper
• Mixer with the paddle attachment, and hook attachment (if you have one)
• 18-Inch baking sheet
• 1-gallon plastic food storage bag

Ingredients:

• 1 cup shortening (room temperature)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 cup unsulphured molasses (it's important to use unsulphured molasses for color and taste)
• 2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 1 bag of Ginger's Breadboys gingerbread mix
• 1/4 cup of water
• Flour for dusting

Instructions:

1) Use a mixer with the paddle attachment to cream the shortening. Add sugar and mix.

2) Add the egg and mix well. Then add molasses, and apple cider vinegar, and mix.

3) Switch the mixer speed to slow and add gingerbread mix and water. Blend just until flour is incorporated into the mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed, and mix.

4) Empty dough into the wax paper baking sheet.

5) Using the wax paper knead the dough to form a block. Wrap the block of dough in the same wax paper to form and place it inside the food storage bag.

6) Chill for three hours, or overnight in the refrigerator.

7) Preheat the oven to 375 F

8) Remove the dough from the refrigerator, unwrap and cut the dough into 12 equal parts.

9) Place dough on a flat rolling surface, on top of pre-cut parchment paper. Cover with a sheet of wax paper.

10) Roll out the dough with a rolling pin on a flat surface. Try to keep the square shape similar to that of the piece of parchment paper.

11) Using the cookie cutters, cut out the gingerbread dough into wall panels,roof pieces, and gabled end pieces.

12) Remove extra dough around the sides and set it aside. Save it for later! Don't toss it out. Repeat steps until you have 4 roof pieces and 4 wall panels and 4 gabled ends.  This will make 2 houses.

13) Transfer the gingerbread house pieces with the parchment paper to a baking sheet. Before baking, you can use the included cutters to cut out and create doors, windows or wreaths, make window shutters, roof shingles, or disc pavers. The gingerbread house kit also includes 2 dough embossers/impression stamps so you can create a diamond pattern on the roof or cobblestones on the walls. This will help give the house walls textures if you like, and guide you when piping the roof with icing.

14) Bake each piece for approximately 9 ~ 10 minutes. Baking time varies from oven to oven. The gingerbread should be firm but not crisp. Repeat the baking process with the smaller pieces (door, windows, etc.). Bake the smaller pieces for 8 minutes.

15) Let the pieces cool off completely before you assemble and decorate the house. This will prevent the icing from being runny and secure the pieces together. It's important for the icing to be hard when it dries, otherwise, the house won't stand the test of time, and may topple over and break.

Here's a baking 'hack' we recently read about.

Instead of chilling, rolling out the sticky dough, and using cookie cutters to form the shapes, the creator suggests baking a cookie bar - sheet - first. Just spread the dough evenly on a cookie sheet - on a full sheet of parchment paper - and bake. Once the cookie bar/sheet is baked, then use cookie cutters to press out the shapes. (We suggest you do this before the bar/sheet has had an opportunity to cool.) Despite pressing out the silhouettes with a cookie cutter post-baking, the edges still seem to be pretty clean and even.  

Assembling the House:

Use our royal icing recipe to make the 'mortar' needed to assemble the pieces securely in place. Assemble the house on the rectangle cardboard base provided in the kit. Pipe icing onto the house sides using tube #7. Assemble the sides first. These will be the base structure. You can use soup cans to hold the base structure in place while the icing dries. It will take a couple of minutes (roughly 8-10 minutes) for the icing to dry completely.

Piping extra icing on the inside edges of the panels can give the house even more stability.

Once the base panels are set, pipe icing to the sides of the roof pieces. A major mistake is attaching both roof pieces at the same time. Attach each roof piece one at a time to the base structure. Let the icing dry out completely before decorating.

Decorating the House:

Time to decorate the house! Grab the Builder's Toolkit and the assorted candies from the storage tin and get creative! Add your favorite candies to the mix or add food coloring to the icing to add details to the house. You can follow our gingerbread house template for a traditional gingerbread house, or think outside of the box and get creative with some of our other design ideas.

Helpful Tips:

• All ingredients should be a room temperature before you start! Especially the shortening, so that it can be creamed properly.
• If the gingerbread mix becomes lumpy while sitting inside the tin, sift before using.
• Switch mixer's attachment to a hook attachment- if you have one- while incorporating gingerbread mix.
• Add flour or powdered sugar to the dough impression stamps to prevent them from sticking to the dough.
• If you won't be assembling the house after they cool off, you can refrigerate the pieces. Stack the house panels, separated with parchment or wax paper, and refrigerate.

Baking a gingerbread house can feel a little intimidating or complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. With this easy gingerbread house recipe and a little help from our gingerbread house kit, you can create a beautiful gingerbread house without being a seasoned baker. Don’t forget to tag us in your gingerbread creations!