Simple gingerbread house

Simple gingerbread house

Use this gingerbread recipe to get the kids in the kitchen and create some magical memories

Difficulty and servings

Moderately easy

Makes 1 house!

Preparation and cooking times

Total time

Method

  1. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger into a large bowl, then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough. If it won't quite come together, add a tiny splash of water.
  2. Cut out the template (see below to download). Put a sheet of baking paper on your work surface and roll about one quarter of the dough to the thickness of two £1 coins. Cut out one of the sections, 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 Christmas trees, if you like.
  3. Pick out the most intact flaked almonds and gently poke them into the roof sections, pointy-end first, to look like roof tiles. 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.
  4. Put the egg whites 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 snakes 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.
  5. 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 along the length of 20 mini chocolate fingers and stick these lengthways onto the side walls of the house. Use three, upright, for the door. Using the icing, stick sweets around the door and on the front of the house. 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. Repeat all around the front of the house. Cut the chocolate mini roll or dipped Flake on an angle, then fix with icing to make a chimney. Pipe a little icing around the top. If you've made gingerbread trees, decorate these now, too, topping each with a silver ball, if using. Dust the roof with icing sugar for a snowy effect. Lay a winding path of sweets, and fix gingerbread trees around and about using blobs of icing. Your gingerbread house will be edible for about a week but will last a lot longer.
Try

Watch the video

Click here to see Jane demonstrate how to make and decorate the house.

Print a template

Click here to download a template.

Recipe from Good Food magazine, January 2008.

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Latest comments and suggestions

Results 61-80

  • Binder photo Evelyn

    22 November 2010

    Evelyn rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Fantastic recipe. I have made it with my son each year for hte past 2, and intend to do so again this year (he is now 6). He LOVES it, and it always looks good, no matter HOW over-enthusiastically he decorates it. This one's a winner!

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  • Binder photo Shopgirl

    26 November 2010

    Shopgirl commented on this recipe

    A question about the icing for this cake: If you make up the icing and use some of it to stick the house together, what do you do with the rest of the icing if you leave the cake to dry overnight as suggested? Will the icing be ok in the fridge? Or should I make the icing in two batches instead?

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  • Binder photo Melania

    04 December 2010

    Melania commented on this recipe

    I made this in well over the time stated but it was well worth the effort! The gingerbread tastes great and the icing held it together well - no need to leave things for a few hours or overnight, I stabilised the sides with teacups whilst putting on the roof and it was fine in an hour. Had a lot of icing left over so don't worry about being cautious with it. Absolutely fantastic simple recipe for a baking novice!

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  • Binder photo Megan

    08 December 2010

    Megan rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Was so pleased to find this gingerbread house on website - I made it from the magazine originally, and it was a great hit. Last year I used a kit - when I suggested to my granddaughters that we make one this year - it was thumbs up for this one and thumbs down for the kit !

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  • Binder photo rachelmcbachel

    09 December 2010

    rachelmcbachel rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    I have made this every christmas for as long as I can remember. I also used the original recipe from the magazine and still make it every year. This is the one thing that me and my brothers always love to do at christmas and we always have so much fun decorating it and trying to get the roof to stay on! we pretty much do our own templates and decorations now, we like to go a bit crazy, making fences out of curly wurlys and a little shed on the side made of choc fingers with flake logs inside and a chocolate button path - its still great fun!

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  • Binder photo rachelmcbachel

    09 December 2010

    rachelmcbachel commented on this recipe

    I would also like to add that we just use melted white chocolate to join all the walls and roof as it dries really quickly and cans of beans or something to support it all while its drying.

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  • Binder photo carmanian

    14 December 2010

    carmanian commented on this recipe

    Kathreenie and anyone baking for nut allergies why not use chocolate buttons for the roof and white ones for snowy roof!yum

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  • Binder photo ....Mum

    18 December 2010

    ....Mum commented on this recipe

    absolutely lovely recipe. My daughter made it last year at only 12, and looked fantastic, we'll be doing the same this year!!

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  • Binder photo Shivy

    18 December 2010

    Shivy rated and commented on this recipe

    4 stars

    I made this for a staff christmas lunch at work and it went down a storm! Was quite fiddly to put together and I put it in the fridge overnight to make sure it hardened completely. Gingerbread tasted nice too.

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  • Binder photo divinez

    18 December 2010

    divinez rated this recipe

    5 stars

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  • Binder photo kathryn

    22 December 2010

    kathryn commented on this recipe

    I made this for a class christmas gift for my son's class and also for my nephews nursery, really simple to make just make sure your icing nice and firm for assembly, i used 4 chocolate fingers inside the house to help keep the house steady whilst it set, last year i made the other design on this site and used that recipe for this as the gingerbread was soft to eat but held together well for the house, this house is more impressive then the other, much more christmasy looking, by using the 3 for £1 chocolate buttons and dolly mixtures for tesco (bag of white,bag of brown and a bag of dolly mix) made it reasonably priced to make... all in all a loverly gift that was very much appreciated by all :-)

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  • Binder photo kamilshka

    02 January 2011

    kamilshka rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Excellent gingerbread recipe - made very strong walls/roofs. I used instant Royal Icing powder instead of the above recipe and it worked very well. Mixed it with water and with just a little low-speed whisking to make it fluffy, it made a very attractive and incredibly sticky and strong cement for the house! For the roof we used chocolate buttons, or Twizzlers laid sideways, or royal-icing piped on in tile shapes. They all looked lovely! A friend made coloured windows by putting one boiled sweet on a grease-proof sheet on a baking tray and shove it in a hot oven for a few minutes until it's melted into a puddle, remove and peel off sheet when cool and you have a window to stick to the inside of the house. I cut squares out of the walls before baking, to make windows for them to go in.

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  • Binder photo fay

    03 January 2011

    fay rated and commented on this recipe

    4 stars

    Easy to make, but took longer than I thought to make dough and cut out. Only made up half of the icing mix for the glue and decoration and still had plenty left over. Didn't need supports for the walls or roof, icing dried very quickly and was very strong and left off the nuts on the roof. Kids loved decorating and eating it. Kept well for a week before we started eating it. Really worth the effort and I will never buy a kit to do this as it surprised everyone who saw it how easy it was to do.

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  • Binder photo Lorna Clark

    04 January 2011

    Lorna Clark commented on this recipe

    I have made a gingerbread house with my kids every xmas for about ten years now and although I have several gingerbread recipes, this is certainly one of the better ones. The template is excellent and has been passed on to many friends. This year though, my now teenage children took a tip from a programme they saw before xmas to make a garden for the house which consisted of broken cookies to make the soil and tiny veg made from cut up fruit pastilles! The roof was tiled beautifully with after eights. All in all a very enjoyable xmas eve.

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  • Binder photo applespongepudding

    15 January 2011

    applespongepudding rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    So much fun to make - definatley recommended - although patience is needed! I used Smarties cut in half instead of the almonds due to a nut dislike and it turned out wonderfully! Any extra gingerbread was made into gingerbread men and the like which was an extra bonus!

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  • Binder photo centauri

    15 January 2011

    centauri rated and commented on this recipe

    2 stars

    Bit of a nightmare! The recipe is great, makes good, sturdy gingerbread, but the house design is a big issue - the roof pitch is so steep the roof just slides off again!

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  • Binder photo Paula

    16 January 2011

    Paula rated and commented on this recipe

    4 stars

    Just used the dough recipe to make gingerbread men worked really well - really easy to handle dough, just let it cool down a bit before rolling out. Might have a go at the house next christmas!

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  • Binder photo McLovin

    19 January 2011

    McLovin rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Made this for the first time and was very impressed with the results! It was so fun to do with the children. Instead of using flaked almonds on the roof, we just stuck chocolate buttons on to look like roof tiles - very realistic, especially with a light coating of icing sugar. I think this will become a regular Christmas family activity! It also tasted great after being out on display for over two weeks!

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  • Binder photo KagsMiskit

    05 April 2011

    KagsMiskit commented on this recipe

    I am going to break tradition and do this house for Easter. It will be good practice for the Xmas centre piece. Being in South Africa, snow is a stretch of the imagination for kids, beacuse both Easter and Xmas haopen in sunny weather. I will make the first one this weekend, for my niece who is visiting, then my son and I will make the Easter master piece for the Easter weekend. Instead of snow, we will have grass and other summer/autumn goodies. Grass I have already made out of dessicated covonut coloured with green food colour. I cannot wait, the comments above have encouraged me a great deal. Will let you know how it turns out.

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  • Binder photo Hannie_P

    07 December 2011

    Hannie_P commented on this recipe

    This looks great. I've printed off the template at 75% of the size so it's small. I have two girls, so I will let them make two houses each so we have a little gingerbread village. There's lots of family coming for Christmas so we will have a super centre piece! Looking forward to experimenting now!

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Difficulty and servings

Moderately easy

Makes 1 house!

Preparation and cooking times

Total time

Keep the kids busy

Ingredients

FOR THE GINGERBREAD

  • 250g unsalted butter
  • 200g dark muscovado sugar
  • 7 tbsp golden syrup
  • 600g plain flour
  • 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 4 tsp ground ginger

TO DECORATE

  • 200g bag flaked almonds
  • 2 egg whites
  • 500g icing sugar , plus extra to dust
  • 125g pack mini chocolate fingers
  • generous selcetion sweets of your choice, choose your own colour theme
  • 1 mini chocolate roll or a dipped chocolate flake
  • few edible silver balls
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