Ann Reardon

Gingerbread House 2017

 

As soon as the smell of gingerbread fills the house it makes Christmas seem oh so close. We set up our tree today, a little early I know but our 6 year old was so excited about setting it up, his enthusiasm was infectious. As I child I remember Christmas took ages to come. We had a real tree each year and more than once the cat tried to climb the tree resulting in the entire thing ending up on the floor with smashed glass baubles and spilled soil. Seeing presents under the tree Christmas morning was magical.

To make this gingerbread house you will need:

gingerbread house template

Gingerbread House Template

 

2x gingerbread house recipe (see below)
1x royal icing recipe (see below)
Candy for decorating (mini m&m’s jubes, mollies for the garden)
Lights and candy to put inside the house
chocolate, compound chocolate will work best for sticking the house together
Food coloring

Gingerbread House Recipe

gingerbread houser recipe ingredients
430g (15.17 ounces) or 2 cups butter or margarine
430g (15.17 ounces) or 2 cups caster (super fine) sugar
250g (8.82 ounces) or 2/3 cup glucose syrup
260g (9.17 ounces) or 3/4 cup molasses
180 mL (6.09 fluid ounces) or 2/3 cup milk
1195g (42.15 ounces) or 7 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp bicarb soda
3 Tbsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp ground cloves
3 Tbsp ground ginger

Royal icing

how to make royal icing for gingerbread houses
Royal Icing Recipe (with fresh egg)
3 egg whites
450g (15.87 ounces) (15.87 ounces (449.91 grams)) or 3 1/2 cup plus 1Tbsp icing sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar (or a teaspoon of lemon juice)
Whip all ingredients together on high speed until white and thick enough to hold its shape.

Royal Icing Recipe (with powdered egg whites)
1kg (2.2 pounds) or 8 cups icing sugar
50g (1.76 ounces) powdered egg white or 124g (4.37 ounces) pavlova magic mix
100mL (3.38 fluid ounces) or 1/3 cup water
plus an additional 4 – 10 Tablespoons of water to get the correct consistency
Whisk all the ingredients together until thick and white.

Put the butter, sugar and the molasses and glucose syrup into a bowl. and mix until well combined.
Pour in the milk followed by the dry ingredients. If you don’t have mixer with a dough hook stir through half of dry ingredients using the mixer, add the rest and then stir using a spoon.

All your dough out between two sheets of baking paper to make a large rectangle. Remove the top baking paper and add your template pieces. Cut around all the pieces and leave the extra strips around the edges in place as they stop the corners from burning.

gingerbread house template

Bake at 180C (356 degrees Fahrenheit) for approximately 10 minutes then pull it out of the oven and redo the cuts and remove the windows. Return it to the oven for a further 10 minutes, your gingerbread should be as dry as possible but not burnt. It does go harder as it cools so don’t worry if it is a little soft in the centre. If you pull it out too early and it is still soft once cooled you can always pop it back into the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

Once all the pieces are cooked and cooled you can begin to assemble and decorate, see the video for detailed instructions on ideas on how to do this.

For more gingerbread house ideas you might like…

how to make gingerbread house from scratch gingerbread house video gingerbread-house-plans-template-up-movie-house-how-to-cook-that-reardon-38
gingerbread house how to cook that amazing wedding cake gingerbread house gingerbread house decoration using royal icing and fondant

Copyright © 2017 Reardon Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. How To Cook That

My Cookbook

ann reardon crazy sweet creations cookbook
Stores that sell my book listed by country: http://bit.ly/ARcookbook
All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.

22 Comments View Comments

  1. Hi Ann
    Your recipe is great! I made this with my big sister (I’m on the right in the picture and my sister Emily is on the left) in New Zealand and shared it with my cousins. I love watching your show.

  2. Rating: 5

    Hello,
    Please can you do a village of small gingerbread houses? I want to decorate some with my brothers.

  3. Rating: 4

    Ur cakes are really beautiful like your voice…i request you plz share a recipie on how to make cream cheese at home..it will be wonderful .Looking frward for replies .
    With lots of love
    Nan

  4. Rating: 5

    It snows. In Michigan in December With global warming it sometimes melts before Christmas. And we end up without snow on Christmas Day. But we usually have some. We go to my moms and though we had very little snow 2 hours south, my moms has 8 inhches id snow and the trees are freshly dusted. It’s simply beautiful and picture perfect but also cold Right. Ow at 8 am it is 3F

    • Thanks for commenting Danee. It is 26 degress Celsius here and humid. So very different.

  5. Rating: 4.5

    My daughter and I had a great time attempting this year’s house! We ran into some problems because of the heat in Brisbane, but once we adjusted our royal icing recipe accordingly it turned out okay. Last year was our first gingerbread house attempt (we did a hybrid of two of your houses) — it seems it’s starting to become a family tradition for us too 🙂

    • This house looks gorgeous Courtney. You and your daughter should be so proud of the results and specially baking it in Brissy!

  6. Rating: 4.5

    I make a gingerbread house every year at Christmas, this year I decided that I would add lights, after watching your videos I put together my own house accompanied with a star tree iced and decorated by my 2 and 5 year old x

    • That’s great work Katy! I love the little flowers in the windows.

  7. Rating: 5

    This years gingerbread house made it into my husbands work and they are loving it… It was my first attempt to make everythig from scratch 🙂 it could have definitely gone worse but I do need to work on my piping skills lol

    • Hi Jessie, I love your gingerbread nativity. Well done!

  8. Hi the template costs 5.99 and I was wondering is it meant to cost money?

    • Hi Kiri, Yes, Most of the templates cost a small amount. Ann does all the research, testing and design so you can get a tempalte that works.

  9. Rating: 4.5

    Hey, I ended up making this gingerbread house and it took me three whole days lol. Just to let you know I ended up using 6 pounds of compound chocolate on the house. It was so much harder than I thought so if anyone tries this, just to let you know it’s ALOT harder than it looks.

    • Looks great Jedidiah. The first one is always tricky, but it gets faster with practice.

  10. Rating: 4.5

    Hi, the house looks great! I was just wondering if corn syrup can be substituted for the glucose syrup.

    • Hi Irina, Yes light corn syrup is the same as glucose syrup.

  11. Rating: 5

    You’re very cheery, Scrooge!
    I think it looks fabulous. Will be attempting a gingerbread house this year for the first time ever! Thanks for all the ideas.

  12. Rating: 5

    Hi, the house looks so cool! I can’t wait to try this version, last year’s was a huge success!

    Quick question about the chocolate – did you use real chocolate or compound? And how much did you need to cover the whole surface? (You don’t specify that in either the recipe or the video)

    Thank you so much from (usually muddy but cold at Christmas) the Czech republic 🙂

    • Same would love to know, I got a pound of compound chocolate so i’m gonna use that anyway…

    • Hi Eliska, good question. Ann prefers to use real chcolate but you can use either real or compound chocolate here. The quantity is given in the recipe: 200g

      • Did she temper the chocolate?

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