Gingerbread house
- Jane Hornby
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Makes 1 house with 12 portions
More effort
Prep: 2 hrs
Cook: 30 mins
Plus holding together time
A star rating of 4 out of 5.141 ratingsRate
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Learn how to make a gingerbread house with our simple biscuit recipe and design template. Kids will love getting involved with baking and decorating them.
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Gingerbread trees
A star rating of 4 out of 5.45 ratings
We made this recipe with Lyle's golden syrup. The original and the best, the golden and green tin is a firm favourite on any baker’s shelf. It’s an important part of gingerbread flavour.
Click here to download a template.
Ingredients
Nutrition
Units:
MetricUS
For the gingerbread
- 250g unsalted butter
- 200g dark muscovado sugar
- 7 tbsp Tate & Lyle golden syrup
- 600g plain flour
- 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 4 tsp ground ginger
To decorate
-
200g flaked almonds
-
2 egg whites
-
500g icing sugar
plus extra to dust
-
125g mini chocolate
fingers
-
generous selection of sweets
of your choice, choose your own colour theme
-
1 mini chocolate roll
or a dipped chocolate flake
-
few edible silver balls
For the house design
-
template
(see tips, below)
Keep the screen awake with cook mode on the Good Food app.
Nutrition: per serving
-
kcal636
-
fat30g
-
saturates13g
-
carbs80g
-
sugars38g
-
fibre2g
-
protein10g
-
salt0.6g
low
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Method
-
step 1
Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/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.
-
step 2
Cut out the template (download from the tips below). Put a sheet of baking paper on a 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.
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step 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 minutes to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.
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step 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.
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step 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.
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step 6
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.
Online webinars Want to learn how to make the perfect gingerbread house? Sign up for our online webinar and create this festive sweet treat with the help of our cookery experts.
RECIPE TIPS
PRINT A TEMPLATE
Click here to download a template.
WORKING WITH ICING
If you find your icing is too thick or starts to dry out while you're working, just add a splash of water and mix well.
TRICKS AND TIPS
Still struggling to build the perfect gingerbread house? Find more tips and tricks for creating your structure from our cookery team.
Recipe from Good Food magazine, January 2008
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A star rating of 4 out of 5.141 ratings
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