Happy Holidays!
School is out and many of us are planning on (attempting to) build gingerbread houses with the kiddos. To make the process easier on everyone, I have gathered up our favorite gingerbread house recipes, as well as a few helpful tips that will make building your gingerbread houses a whole lot easier. Here is your guide to everything gingerbread!
The Gingerbread recipe we love the most:
No need to reinvent the wheel on this one. We use a gingerbread recipe from foodnetwork.com that works every single time. One thing to keep in mind with this recipe is that it will seem very crumbly at first. Don’t worry, just keep kneading the dough until it starts to combine. If it is taking too long, you may need to add a tablespoon or two of warm water to help speed up the process. It will come together. As with any cookie dough, It really helps to let the dough chill for at least an hour before you start cutting your shapes.
The Royal Icing Recipe we love the most:
For adhering your cookie cut-outs and decorating the gingerbread house, try our no-drama go to royal icing recipe. You will find the recipe at the bottom of the post within the link, below.
FIND OUR ROYAL ICING RECIPE HERE
Top 5 Tips for building gingerbread houses:
- Build the basic structure of your gingerbread house out of paper prior to baking so you will know how big your gingerbread cut-outs need to be.
- When baking gingerbread for a house, you may want to slightly over-bake your dough. This will ensure that your gingerbread house is strong enough to hold together.
- Consider building your gingerbread house on a piece of board. This will allow you to move the gingerbread house easily once it’s constructed. You would hate to do all that work just to have the house fall apart when you move it!
- Use a cheese grater to smooth out the edges of your gingerbread cookie pieces to help them fit together just right. I learned this trick from Chef John Cook at The Grove Park Inn and it has been a game changer.
- If you are building a gingerbread house that WILL NOT BE EATEN, you can support your house walls with foam board and use hot glue to hold together your bigger pieces, (no hot glue for kids, of course). You can see that we used plenty of non-edible components in the gingerbread house featured in this post. No shame in my game! This is all about baking memories and having fun.
Decorations:
Here are a few sources to find fun and totally unique candy for your gingerbread houses. Remember, great candy decorations can turn even the most messed up gingerbread house into a really charming piece of art. There are no rules, think outside the box and don’t take the process too seriously!
We hope this post will serve as a print-worthy source for your fun and festive family gingerbread traditions. I will continue to add to the post moving forward as I learn from my own mistakes, as well your tips and feedback!
Merry Christmas,
Candyshop Vintage Gingerbread Shop:
Leave a Reply