Daring Bakers’ Challenge: The Gingerbread House

I was pretty excited when the challenge was first announced for this month.  I knew I wouldn’t have time to complete it until I went home (my parents’ home…I’m 28, single, and haven’t lived in the same city for much longer than a year in over 6 years… so its still *home* to me) for Christmas.  I was excited because I love being able to flex my creative muscles…but there’s also something a bit daunting about a gingerbread house.  The dough is dry and can be a bit tricky, the pieces shrink at inconsistent rates in the oven making for a lot of trimming afterward to make the pieces fit, and I had no idea if I could actually get my house to stick together for longer than 5 minutes.

In the end…it all worked out just fine.  In fact, I’m quite proud of the finished product!

I used one of the recipes provided by the Daring Bakers for the gingerbread, simple sugar to hold it all together, and royal icing for decorative purposes.  I used this Swedish Gingerbread House template from Martha Stewart.  Below are the recipes:

Scandinavian Gingerbread (Pepparkakstuga)

from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas

http://astore.amazon.com/thedarkit-20/detail/0816634963

• 1 cup butter, room temperature [226g]
• 1 cup brown sugar, well packed [220g]
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 4 teaspoons ground ginger
• 3 teaspoons ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• ½ cup boiling water
• 5 cups all-purpose flour [875g]

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until blended. Add the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the baking soda with the boiling water and add to the dough along with the flour. Mix to make a stiff dough. If necessary add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Chill 2 hours or overnight.  (I ended up adding around 4 tablespoons of water.)

2. Cut patterns for the house, making patterns for the roof, front walls, gabled walls, chimney and door out of cardboard.

3. Roll the dough out on a large, ungreased baking sheet and place the patterns on the dough. Mark off the various pieces with a knife, but leave the pieces in place.

4. (I rolled out the dough on a floured counter top, cut shapes, and transferred these to a baking sheet. Any scraps I saved and just re-rolled at the end.]

5. Preheat the oven to 375 F (190 C). Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the cookie dough feels firm. After baking, again place the pattern on top of the gingerbread and trim the shapes, cutting the edges with a straight-edged knife. Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

Royal Icing:

• 1 large egg white
• 3 cups (330g) powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon almond extract

1. Beat all ingredients until smooth, adding the powdered sugar gradually to get the desired consistency. Pipe on pieces and allow to dry before assembling.  Add any food coloring you wish to the icing.

2. If you aren’t using it all at once you can keep it in a small bowl, loosely covered with a damp towel for a few hours until ready to use. You may have to beat it slightly to get it an even consistency if the top sets up a bit. Piped on the house, this will set up hard over time.

Simple Syrup:

• 2 cups (400g) sugar

1. Place in a small saucepan and heat until just boiling and the sugar dissolves. Dredge or brush the edges of the pieces to glue them together. If the syrup crystallizes, remake it.  (I completely burned my simple sugar.  It didn’t crystallize, but it turned a dark black-brown color and stunk up the kitchen.  Luckily, it made the syrup ridiculously strong and sticky.  My dad thinks I discovered a new form of super glue.  It was strong enough that my walls were easily able to hold up my roof pieces which were twice as thick as any of the walls.  I guess I need to work on my dough rolling skills!)

The finished product……….Click on the pictures to get the full size image!

My winter wonderland scene.

I used royal icing, crush peppermints and powdered sugar (for snow), red hots, and melted Jolly Ranches for decorations.  My mother ingeniously made the melted Jolly Rancher *stained glass windows* and my dad covered a white piece of cardboard with waxed paper for my display.  It was a family affair!

A close-up of the front door.

To make the trees stand up, I dunked the bottoms of the trunks in simple syrup and then covered up the dark syrup with royal icing.

The *stained glass windows*.

There is a small candle on the inside making the windows glow.

The back of the house and my frosting wreathe.

I covered up any spots where there was a lot of the ugly dark simply syrup holding together my house with royal icing.  You can also see how completely off-centered my wreathe is.  This is because I did all my frosting decorating before I assembled the house (like one is suppose to).  BUT I should have checked to see if all the pieces were the correct length and done any trimming prior to icing.  The side with the wreathe ended up being over an inch longer than the corresponding piece on the opposite side.  I had to trim the wreathe piece once it was already decorated and connected to another piece.  I’m lucky my gingerbread didn’t break while I cutting it…

A detail picture of my *thatched roof.*  For all my icing piping I used a simple piping kit from Williams Sonoma.  (I purchased it in the store, but I cannot find it on their website.  I linked to an Ebay seller who has it.)

All in all, I’m really pleased with how my house turned out.  I’m also pleased to say we did it on the cheap!  Chances are you probably have all the ingredients for the gingerbread and icing already in your pantry.  And the only candy I purchased specifically for this house was a 99 cent bag of redhots.  (The Jolly Ranchers were found in the back of a cupboard…they had to be at least 3 years old…they were getting to that gooey-sticky-rotten stage and therefore were not fit for eating but perfect for melting!)

My mother helped out a lot on this project so I have to say Thank You to her!

We’ve been doing a lot of cooking and baking lately and I have a backlog of posts to get up.  Be on the look out for Chicken Pot Pies, Norwegian Krumkake, and Swedish Almond Cookies…..