These decorations are fancy – you should feel free to adapt them to the time and ability you have, as well as your style. If you’re not a dog person, don’t fret – this house does just as well as a haunted house (piped with spiderwebs and filled with bat- and pumpkin-shaped cookies) or even a baseball clubhouse (decorated with your favorite team’s logo and filled with bat- and ball-shaped cookies).
| Level: | Advanced |
| Yield: | One 8- by 8- by 8″ house with base, plus more for cookies |
| Level: | Advanced |
| Yield: | One 8- by 8- by 8″ house with base, plus more for cookies |
Ingredients
- 2 cups shortening
- 4 sticks (1 pound) unsalted butter
- 14 cups bread flour, plus more for dusting
- 2 cups sugar
- 1/3 cup ground ginger
- 3 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon fine salt
- 3 cups dark corn syrup
- 2 1/2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
- All-purpose flour, for rolling out the dough
- One recipe Royal Icing, recipe follows
- Cornstarch and vinegar or confectioners’ sugar, to thicken Royal Icing
- Candy for decorating, optional
- 2 pounds confectioners’ sugar
- 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons meringue powder (egg white powder)
- Food coloring, as desired
Instructions
- Melt the shortening and butter together in a medium saucepan. Let cool.
- Sift the flour, sugar, ginger, cinnamon and salt into a large bowl. Mix the melted butter into the flour mixture with an electric mixer until sandy. Add the corn syrup and vanilla, and mix until evenly incorporated, but still crumbly in texture. Press the dough together by hand and divide into 8 equal parts. Press into rough squares about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.
- Place the dough on top of a flour-dusted sheet of parchment. Roll a square of dough about 1/4-inch thick and into an 8- by 11-inch rectangle. Repeat with all the remaining squares. Stack them up and refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, click here to e-mail a link of the template to your desktop or laptop computer for printing. Print the file at 100% on letter size paper and cut out the pieces. Remove the top sheet of parchment from the dough. Lay the templates on the rolled dough slabs and cut out all the pieces with a long, sharp knife or pizza cutter. (You will have a total of 8 cut panels plus 3 extra sheets for cookies. Cut out the remaining dough with cookie cutters of your choice.) Cut a 2- by 3-inch door with a rounded top into one of the tall walls. (We used a 2 inch cookie cutter to make the rounded top, and a sharp knife to cut the rest of the door out.) Stack panels on a cookie sheet and chill 45 minutes to set. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and position the oven racks evenly. Bake the gingerbread shapes until they are a rich tawny brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool on a rack. With a fine kitchen rasp, file the panels to make all the edges straight.
- Thicken about 2 cups of the Royal Icing with either cornstarch and a couple of drops of vinegar, or extra confectioners’ sugar, to get the consistency of caulk. Fit a pastry bag with a medium round tip and fill it with the thickened icing.
- Pipe a generous amount of Royal Icing along the bottom and the sides of a short wall. Center the wall 3/4 inch from one edge, directly
- onto the base. Use a box or can to help support the walls while they dry.
- Pipe Royal Icing along the bottom of a tall wall, and stick it to the base with an edge pressed against the icing on the first wall.
- Repeat with the remaining two walls in the same manner until the four walls are up, making an open box with a 3/4-inch border all around the base. (The two tall walls will face each other.) Allow the icing to dry completely, about 24 hours, before attaching the roof.
- Ice the sloped edges on one side of the house and attach the big roof piece. (Line up the top of the roof with the peaks of the tall walls.) Use a box or can to prop up the overhang of the roof while it dries in place. Attach the smaller roof piece on the other side of the slope (prop it up with a box or can) leaving the same amount of overhang. Leave the top open for now. The last roof panel is the lid and will go there when all is dry. Attach the doors. Pipe Royal Icing neatly on the outside of the seams to secure them, and allow the house to dry for 24 hours.
- Fit tips into piping bags. Divide the remaining Royal Icing into batches and color as desired. Fill bags with frosting and decorate the house and roof with icing and candies if using.
- Allow to dry. Fill the house with cookies. Rest the remaining roof slab on the house to make a lid. Enjoy.
- Combine the confectioners’ sugar, meringue powder and 3/4cup water in a large bowl. Mix slowly with an electric mixer until stiff enough to form peaks; the icing should be pure white and thick, but not fluffy and bubbly. If the frosting is over beaten, it will get aerated which makes it harder to work with. If this happens, let the frosting sit to settle, and then use a rubber spatula to vigorously beat and smooth out the frosting.
- Add up to 1 tablespoon food coloring and mix with a rubber spatula until the color is uniform. Gels are best with royal icing. You don’t want to thin them with liquid colors. Be careful of adding too much color, which reduces the sheen of the frosting and can break down the consistency of the frosting over a couple of days. Store the icing at room temperature, covered, with plastic wrap on the surface.
- Copyright 2005 Television Food Network, G.P. All rights reserved.