I once made a gingerbread house with my Banquette chef Bill at the Pump Room that was big enough to walk into. It was a life-size gingerbread playhouse and took days to build. Have fun!
| Level: | Advanced |
| Total: | 5 hr 45 min |
| Prep: | 2 hr |
| Inactive: | 3 hr 30 min |
| Cook: | 15 min |
| Yield: | 1 house |
Ingredients
- 8 ounces unsalted butter (16 tablespoons or 2 sticks), softened
- 1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup dark molasses (not blackstrap)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 6 1/4 cups cake flour
- 4 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Gingerbread House Templates, recipe follows
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar, plus more as needed
- 2 egg whites*
- Frosted shredded mini-wheats for the roof, as needed
- Mini tootsie rolls for a fence, as needed
- White Hershey Kisses for roof top spikes, as needed
- Small candy canes for a lamp post outside the door, as needed
- Granulated sugar for snow drifts, as needed
- Necco Wafers for a cobblestone path, as needed
- 3 large marshmallows, for snow man
- Pretzel sticks, for snowman arms, as needed
- 2 whole cloves, for snowman eyes
- Graham crackers to build a shed, as needed
- Assorted candy such as gum drops, peppermint drops, M & M’s, white chocolate chips, red hots, non-pareils or snow caps, silver dragees, green mint jelly leaves, Life Savers, and Animal Crackers
Instructions
- In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and mix until light and fluffy. Add the eggs 1 at a time until incorporated. Add the molasses and vanilla and mix. Sift together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, cloves, and salt. Working in batches, and mixing after each addition just until combined, add the flour mixture to the butter-sugar mixture. Shape the dough into a thick disk, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate 1 to 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease 2 cookie sheets.
- On a lightly floured surface, divide the dough in half and roll each piece out into a large 1/4-inch thick sheet. Transfer the dough sheets to the sheet pans; then cut out the required shapes with your templates (see Gingerbread House Templates below).
- Bake until stiff and toast-y, about 10 to 15 minutes. Let cool completely.
- Make the Royal Icing: In a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the confectioners’ sugar and egg whites together. Add more sugar, if necessary, to reach a spreadable consistency.
- Assemble and Decorate the House: Glue the house walls together by setting them up on the cardboard base, and piping the royal icing at the joints with a medium plain tip from the inside. Prop the sides up with wine or soda bottles and let set for 30 minutes. Attach the roof pieces, using the icing in the same way
- Using a spatula to apply the icing, glue the frosted mini-wheats on the roof to look like thatching. Attach the front door, with hinges made from icing (leave it open to be more inviting). Decorate as you like, following the suggestions in the ingredient list, using the icing as glue, if needed. Use a small plain tip for any filigree style decorative line work, you may want. *RAW EGG WARNING Food Network Kitchens suggest caution in consuming raw and lightly-cooked eggs due to the slight risk of Salmonella or other food-borne illness. To reduce this risk, we recommend you use only fresh, properly-refrigerated, clean, grade A or AA eggs with intact shells, and avoid contact between the yolks or whites and the shell.
- Gingerbread House Templates:
- Brown paper bags, as needed
- You’ll need to make 7 templates, by drawing the dimensions out on brown paper and cutting them out. Use the templates as a stencil to cut the dough into the required pieces. Here are the templates you’ll need:
- Two front and rear walls: 5 inches high by 8 inches long. Cut out 2 windows from each wall, and 2 1/2 by 1 1/2-inch door in one.
- Two side walls shaped like a house (triangle on a square): 5 inches high by 6 inches long, with a triangle 7 inches high on top (cut all in 1 piece). Cut 1 window out of each side.
- Two overhanging roof pieces: 4 1/2 inches wide by 9 inches long.
- One door: 2 1/2 inches high by 1 1/2 inches wide.
Reviews
Tastes delicious, seems to be really sturdy and works well as dough for a gingerbread house or snap cookies.
this looks like an awesome recipe I’ve got to make five gingerbread houses for the kids
Came out prefect! Even with 3 young boys helping me with every single step! Very happy! And made perfect gingerbread men, too!
The gingerbread is very good for building and eating. I had some dough left over that I made in to ginger bread cookies and they were very tasty. My house had a few weak points in it, but I think that was more builder error than anything else. My only complaint is the icing recipe; I found it to be a little hard to work with; it hardened on me REALLY fast. I don’t know if that’s the nature of royal icing in general or the recipe provided. Overall, great recipe. Will defiantly be using this again. :
We made four houses on Christmas Eve. The recipe was quite small for our average sized house mold (The Chef’s Toolbox Silicone Gingerbread House Mold. We had good success with the dough since the mold does not require rolling. It came out strong and the icing recipe worked well even though it was a little hard to pipe out. Our houses came out beautiful. I plan to use the recipe next year for our new tradition.
PS. I love the flavor!
it was very tasty and me and my family enjoyed building it.:P
This is my first gingerbread house AND the first recipe I tried and I’ll never need to try another one. I’ll be using this recipe for decades. LOVE!
It is not difficult to understand, it says clearly and specifically, 8 ounces, 2 sticks; it say 16 tablespoons which is not 16 ounces, 2 tablespoons is one ounce, even if you do not know that, it still would not be necessary to follow instructions that say 8 ounces, which we all know is a half pound no matter how many sticks it takes.
I think this is the worst recipe I’ve ever tried to make. Made two batches of the dough to make two gingerbread houses and had to throw everything out….$20 worth of ingredients. I have checked, double and triple checked the recipe. Sticky nasty mess. I can’t believe I found it on the FoodNetwork!
I am off to a bad start with this recipe. I have added a least an extra cup of flour. Without it, the dough was VERY sticky. I measured everything very carefully. Hopefully it will be easier to work with after it has chilled for a good two hours. Did anyone else have that problem? I bake all the time and decided to try this recipe for a change. Not too happy at the moment.