Gingerbread House

 
Deciding to get into the holiday spirit, my mum and i spent hours yesterday decorating the house in more lights and tinsel you could shake a stick at, and kept with tradition by watching our favourite christmas movie, 'Elf'. Today, wanting to carry on my festive mood, decided it was gingerbread-house baking time!

I made one last year on christmas eve, but used a little kit (cheap supermarket one), so feeling i'd cheated a little, wanted to make one from scratch...and it couldn't be easier! Once the basic house is constructed, you're free to decorate it in thousands of different ways, and can either be swiftly destroyed and eaten, or left to harden and make a great centrepiece that lasts for a good week or two.

I used a template i found on the internet (link below), but its equally as simple to design your own.

www.bbcgoodfood/recipes/4900/simple-gingerbread-house

Gingerbread Recipe
(180C)
Heat 250g unsalted butter with 200g golden caster sugar and 6 tbsp golden syrup, until all the sugar has dissolved.
In a large bowl, mix together 600g plain flour, 2 tsp bicarbonate soda, 5 tsp ground ginger and 2 tsp cinnamon. (Mixed spice and nutmeg also taste great with it.)
Fold in the wet mix to the dry mix, and form a soft dough. Roll out the dough onto a floured surface until its approx. 0.5cm thick, then place the pieces onto a lined baking tray and bake in the oven for 12 minutes.

Leftover dough can be re-rolled and used to make various other shapes like christmas trees, stars or little gingerbread men, or can be stored and frozen fro up to a month.


                                            Assembly
Once the 6 pieces have cooled, sandwich the two side walls between the taller end walls, held together with piped icing (recipe below), and hold for 2 minutes until the icing is firm enough to stay in place with little support. If it's still not firm enough, use card to prop the pieces up. Then repeat a similar procedure for the two roof tiles, and once completed its best to leave for 24 hours (covered if you're making it with the intention of eating it) to harden, making decoration much easier. Finally using a variety of chocolate, icing and sweets, have fun decorating your house!

For my little house, i used piped white icing, snowies, chocolate buttons, chocolate fingers, wine gums, and candy canes. There's also plenty of leftover sweets to much on while you go!

Thick White icing
Mix together 1 egg white with 300g icing sugar, to make a really thick and glossy icing, which can either be piped for decoration or used as 'glue'.