Mini gingerbread houses
See this recipe step by step

Mini gingerbread houses

Everyone can decorate their own gingerbread house this Christmas, with Sarah Cook's cute mini versions

Difficulty and servings

Moderately easy

MAKES 4

Preparation and cooking times

Preparation time

Prep 45 mins

Cook time

Cook 40 mins

Freezable

FREEZE dough or baked biscuits before assembling

Method

  1. Put about half the flour in a food processor with the butter and whizz until you can't see any lumps of butter remaining. Mix the remaining flour, spices and bicarb together with a pinch of salt. Tip both the floury mixtures into your largest mixing bowl and stir in the sugar. (If you don't have a food processor, rub the butter into all of the flour until it resembles fine crumbs. Then stir in the spices, bicarb and sugar.) Whisk the eggs with the golden syrup and stir into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon. Using your hands, knead together into a smooth dough.
  2. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Roll a quarter of the dough out at a time on a sheet of baking parchment, to the thickness of 2 x £1 coins. Use a small, sharp knife to cut around the house templates - remember that each time you'll need 2 x A, 2 x B and 2 x C for one house. Remove trimmings and lift the gingerbread, on its parchment, onto baking trays. Re-roll trimmings to cut out all the shapes you need.
  3. Bake the gingerbread one tray at a time on a high shelf in the oven for 8-10 mins, until a lovely, rich brown and firm to the touch. As soon as each tray is baked, carefully sit the templates back onto the relevant shapes and trim any edges to neaten (see step 1). Use a cutter to stamp out any windows or cut away any doors with a small, sharp knife. Let all the biscuits cool completely.
  4. Sieve the royal icing sugar into a bowl and stir in dribbles of water until you have a stiff icing. Spoon some into a food bag (cover the rest), snip the tiniest bit off the corner and pipe any icing decorations you want onto the gingerbread. Leave to dry.
  5. Arrange the wall biscuits as you are going to assemble them, then pipe icing along the side edges (see step 2) and stick the walls together. Pipe extra icing where the walls join each other on the inside of the house, and support the sides using your icing balls (see step 3). Leave for a few hrs until set.
  6. Once dry, stick on the roofs, as above - you may need to hold the biscuits on firmly for a few mins until the icing starts to set - or shape your icing balls to support the edges of the roof. Set overnight, then use any remaining royal icing to help you decorate your houses with sweets and sprinkles.
Try

MAKING A TEMPLATE

To make our dinky Swedish-style house, download and print our template and follow the method above.

DECORATE YOUR HOUSES

To decorate your gingerbread: Buy sweets, jars of sprinkles and edible glitter; Keep the window shapes you've cut out and stick them back; Water down the icing and brush all over the roof, dredging in places; Dust icing sugar for a snow effect.

COSY COTTAGE & GRETEL'S GROTTO

Make yourself a gingerbread village with our cosy cottage and Gretel's grotto templates - just use the recipe as above.

LEFTOVER TRIMMINGS?

Re-roll, stamp into gingerbread men, and bake in the same way as the gingerbread houses.

PER SERVING

403 kcalories, protein 5g, carbohydrate 73g, fat 12 g, saturated fat 7g, fibre 1g, sugar 41g, salt 0.57 g

Recipe from Good Food magazine, December 2011.

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Latest comments and suggestions

Results 1-20

  • Binder photo Jane

    24 November 2011

    Jane commented on this recipe

    According to the magazine there are 3 different templates for these - where are they?

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  • Binder photo AlexisBalmer

    25 November 2011

    AlexisBalmer commented on this recipe

    Its a shame they don,t seem to be here, there are templates in the good food magazine, but thats probably what led you here ! I can see there are templates for past years gingerbread houses so maybe they just haven,t been put up yet ?

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  • Binder photo Joanna

    25 November 2011

    Joanna commented on this recipe

    the mag also only has one template. It says look for the cosy cottage template on line! I can't find it either.

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  • Binder photo Rachel

    26 November 2011

    Rachel commented on this recipe

    I have found 3 different templates, one each on each of the 3 gingerbread house recipe pages featured on the home page. hope this helps.

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  • Binder photo nettynoodle

    26 November 2011

    nettynoodle commented on this recipe

    Folks, you are not reading the method for making the cottage. Templates download is on 2nd part. Thanks Good Food, a great recipe.

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  • Binder photo Marie

    27 November 2011

    Marie commented on this recipe

    I made up half the recipe and made two dinky little cottages for Reception class at school. There was loads left to make christmas trees for added decoration. The construction side of things was way easier than I thought it was going to be - royal icing made all the difference. The additional templates weren't on the website when I made them initially, but I am going to have another go using these in time for Christmas. Would really like to know what shelf-life they have, though.

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  • Binder photo Georgelikescake

    01 December 2011

    Georgelikescake rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Can't really fault this recipe! My friend and I spent the whole of Saturday afternoon baking gingerbread, lots of different shapes and sizes. We made 2 houses each plus many men, angels, hearts, trees, even a devil gingerbread man! Sadly my cottage collapsed and neither house looked quite as good as the picture but was definitely a fun afternoon - allow yourself a lot of time to make it all and put it together though!

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  • Binder photo Nennepus

    06 December 2011

    Nennepus commented on this recipe

    I made 4 houses out of dough from my bakery (I live in Norway where ready-made gingerbread dough is easlily available). I used three of the templates linked to this page. I do not use icing to build the houses, I use a simple caramel made of a 5 tbsps of sugar melted in a frying pan. The caramel sets faster than icing and makes it quicker to build the houses (just watch out for the hot caramel...). Lets see if I can leave the link to the photos on here... http:// www. flickr.com/photos/rennasverden/sets/72157628260874193/ (mind the gaps!!)

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  • Binder photo emmiejoanna

    06 December 2011

    emmiejoanna rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Yay! We successfully made 4 beautiful and delicious little houses. Thanks Good Food!

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  • Binder photo Angharad

    07 December 2011

    Angharad rated and commented on this recipe

    4 stars

    Finally a gigerbread house recipe that I can get to work!! n After the disaster of the one 4 years ago I thought i'd face my fears and try this one. I did 2 thirds of the recipe and I didn't want 4 houses but wasn't convinced that 3 eggs could be as easily halved as Good Food claim! I just managed to get 2 houses out of it and they stood very proudly, unaided, until my husband dimolished them after sunday dinner!

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  • Binder photo Nonna-B

    07 December 2011

    Nonna-B commented on this recipe

    Must try these with my 3 grandchildren. Last year I bought a ready cooked house and assembled it with them. I used a caramel "glue" but it made the walls collapse!!!I get a lot of fun from making these sort of things with the children (probably more than they do)

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  • Binder photo dangerine

    15 December 2011

    dangerine rated this recipe

    5 stars

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  • Binder photo chunkymonkey

    16 December 2011

    chunkymonkey commented on this recipe

    Extremely disappointing. Tried doubling, trebling, quadrupling the recipe and they still came out TASTELESS. Would recommend using a different recipe. No gingerbread houses for the kids this year...

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  • Binder photo chunkymonkey

    16 December 2011

    chunkymonkey commented on this recipe

    Sorry I posted this on the wrong page.

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  • Binder photo Nora

    19 December 2011

    Nora rated and commented on this recipe

    4 stars

    Quite tricky to stick the roofs on but once I had managed that, they looked adorable and tasted just as good!

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  • Binder photo Mrs Nomad

    27 December 2011

    Mrs Nomad commented on this recipe

    I made these but the biscuits didn't go as hard as previous recipes I have tried. I actually made christmas trees with them, but they started to go soggy within short time (overnight) so won't use this particular recipe again.

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  • Binder photo Mrs Nomad

    27 December 2011

    Mrs Nomad rated and commented on this recipe

    1 stars

    I made these but the biscuits didn't go as hard as previous recipes I have tried. I actually made christmas trees with them, but they started to go soggy within short time (overnight) so won't use this particular recipe again.

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  • Binder photo Ali

    27 December 2011

    Ali rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    The recipe is lovely, we made 5 cottages with plenty to spare. Did add a drop of milk to bring the dough together but you have to have some faith after that point - it does roll, even though it looks like it's just going to crumble! What the picture doesn't show you is that your side walls need to either be made shorter or go on the outside of the front and back, otherwise you will find out the hard way that your roof isn't big enough!

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  • Binder photo Rachie Bakes

    06 February 2012

    Rachie Bakes rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Made this recipe, but used this template: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4900/simple-gingerbread-house Followed recipe and had alot of dough left over, made gingerbread cookies and still had alot of dough to go in freezer for a second batch of cookies. The gingerbread is very nice and my house was sturdy and stuck together well and stayed together for the week it was out as a decoration. Will use this recipe again this Christmas

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  • Binder photo littlemiss

    18 December 2012

    littlemiss rated and commented on this recipe

    2 stars

    Not sure if I did something wrong but.... Last year I made a gingerbread house. It was perfect. Unfortunately I couldn't find the same recipe so thought I'd give this one a go. The dough was hard to handle because it kept cracking. Eventually, after a lot of handling, I managed to roll it out and cut to shape. But when I took it out of the oven, the surface was cracked, it had risen a little but shrunk in width meaning I couldn't use the templates to reshape. Will not use again and will continue my search for the recipe I used last year. Oh but it is very tasty (and that is the only reason I gave 2 stars!)

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Difficulty and servings

Moderately easy

MAKES 4

Preparation and cooking times

Preparation time

Prep 45 mins

Cook time

Cook 40 mins

Freezable

FREEZE dough or baked biscuits before assembling

Ingredients

  • 1kg plain flour , plus a little extra for dusting
  • 300g cold butter , diced
  • 2 tbsp mixed spice
  • 2 tbsp ground ginger
  • 1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 450g light soft brown sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 225g golden syrup
  • 300g royal icing sugar
  • few ping-pong-size balls of regal icing , wrapped in cling film
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PER SERVING

403 kcalories, protein 5g, carbohydrate 73g, fat 12 g, saturated fat 7g, fibre 1g, sugar 41g, salt 0.57 g

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