 | The holidays are fast approaching and for many of us, visions of baking with our children fill our minds. If you are like me, you have always dreamed of baking a gingerbread house with your kids but haven’t tried it because it seems too difficult. However if you can turn out a batch of decorated sugar cookies, then you’re fully qualified to assemble a gingerbread house. Here are some tips to get you started and carry you along to gingerbread success.
I’ll be honest. A gingerbread house is a bit tricky, especially for first timers. There are a few key areas which could give you difficulty. It can also be quite a messy project. But if you’ve done any Christmas baking, then you are probably no stranger to that dusting of sugar and flour which coats your kitchen on baking days. And you are probably also familiar with the magic of baking a tray of cookies with your favorite child.
So let’s start by defining gingerbread house success. Begin by trying to have a realistic idea of likely outcomes. You are embarking on a messy project, during which you and your kitchen will be covered with sugar and flour. There will candies strewn across your kitchen counter, and your dog will gobble them from the kitchen floor. Your helpers will stuff candies into their mouths and become sugar glazed and hopelessly giggly. Your house may sag and threaten to collapse and your helpers will not take this seriously but will double over with mirth. You might have to prop up your walls with one hand while feverishly slathering icing into widening gaps. The roof may slide off. Your helpers may desert you for cartoons.
Your finished house might not be a candidate for a magazine spread. But you are guaranteed a fun and memorable time with your children, and they will clamor to do it again next Christmas. You are starting a wonderful family tradition that you can enjoy with your children and grandchildren for years. That is gingerbread house success.
Start with a basic gingerbread cookie recipe. Choosing one from a holiday magazine is a good bet. Look for the Christmas cookie magazines that come out in November. Most of these will include a gingerbread recipe. A magazine will also offer photographs to get your creative juices flowing. Sometimes there will be a choice of houses, graded by difficulty. Go for the easiest one: four walls and a roof. Save the chimney and porch for another year. You don’t need that much challenge the first time.
In addition, a holiday magazine will include a pattern for you to copy and cut out. The pattern will usually be shown on graph paper. You’ll need a few pieces of graph paper to copy the pattern. Often, you’ll be instructed to enlarge the magazine’s pattern by a certain amount. The graph paper makes this easy. If a rectangular wall is shown as 6 by 8 graph squares, and the instruction is to double the size, you simply double the dimension to 12 by 16 graph squares on your own paper. Oh, and save the pattern pieces after you’ve used them. You can use them again next year.
Your recipe will call for a batch or two of gingerbread, and a batch or two of icing. Much of the icing will be used to cement your house together. I find a few drops of vegetable glycerin in the icing helps it to bond and hold tight. You can find glycerin in a health food store or large supermarket.
You can divide up your project into at least two days. The first day, make the gingerbread batter and bake. If there is a lot to make, it might be easier to make it in two batches. You’ll need a couple of large cookie sheets. Turn them over and roll out your dough on the bottom.
You will roll out and cut four pieces for the walls. A basic pattern will probably have two long rectangular walls, and two walls with a square bottom and triangular top. There will also be two rectangular pieces for roof. Here is my best advice: Be very careful to make your walls thick so they are sturdy. Plan ahead with your dough. Roll your walls first, making sure they have a uniform thickness. Walls must not be thinner or more delicate than the roof. Walls must be strong and straight to support the roof.
You’ll place the patterns for walls and roof on top of the dough and cut around the outside. Cut as accurately as you can. Take your time, this part is important. If you are going to be off, make sure you cut large, not small. You can always trim a bit later, but you can’t add on.
When you bake keep a close eye on the oven. You want to time the gingerbread just right. Overdone edges will be crumbly and weak.
Once baked, you will place the pattern pieces back on the gingerbread and trim again as needed to get your measurements as close as possible. Again, spend time here and get it right.
Now let it set. Leave your pieces right on the cookie sheet, or move them to wax paper on the counter. While they are still soft from the oven, make sure they lay flat. Let them sit overnight, if possible. They’ll harden and be easier to work with.
For day two, you’ll need to have a piece of sturdy cardboard to construct your house on. And of course, you’ll need the ingredients for icing, a pastry sleeve with metal tips to pipe the icing, and plenty of candies and cookies for decorations.
This is where it really gets interesting. You will start constructing one wall at a time. Have a space cleared where you can work and leave things out to dry without needing to be moved. You’ll be cementing two walls together to start, propping them up gently with coffee mugs, and using icing to glue them together. Try to make your inside angle a square corner. Put a piece of paper into the inside corner, it should snug up perfectly inside the two walls. If you set the first walls wrong, then the last ones will be very tricky. Once they are joined together, let them dry for about 45 minutes.
You can add one more wall at a time, letting it dry before the next. Each time, try to make a good square corner. Take your time. When you get four walls standing you are going to feel very proud. Take pictures.
Now comes the slightly stressful part: the roof. If you’ve chosen a basic beginner house, you’ll have two rectangular pieces for roof. If your walls are sturdy, you’ve cut them correctly, and you’ve placed them together in square corners, you’ve got a decent shot at getting the roof to stay on the house. You’ll put your roof panels on together, piping icing along the top of the walls, and laying the roof pieces on, then cementing them together down the middle seam.
Be very careful, tiptoe and hold your breath and the whole structure might just stand. If it does, you deserve to feel extremely satisfied. Don’t worry so much if it doesn’t. Some of the very best gingerbread house makers have resorted to all kinds of desperate stratagems to prop up a wobbly house. Toothpicks can be inserted to skewer key parts. They can be lashed together on the inside with thread. All kinds of things can be left to prop up walls on the inside that no one will see. And enormous amounts of icing can be slathered to glue together widening gaps.
Let it all set for another 45 minutes or so, and then you can dig into decorating. Go wild, you deserve it. My son stuffed dinosaurs and cowboys inside our first house, and we used icing for snow, sugar wafers for doors, gumdrops for Christmas lights, and hard candies for shrubbery. It turned out wonderfully. I say that though it sagged dreadfully and the roof began to slide off. We made heroic attempts to save it. We ended up constructing a kind of scaffolding around the house, tying everything together with toothpicks and black thread. It wasn’t very pretty, but we loved it anyway. And then we ate it.
Oh yes. You get to eat it. And if the gingerbread gets a bit hard you can always dunk it in tea or cocoa, and that is quite yummy.
Because I had the goal of a perfect gingerbread house for my first attempt I was slightly disappointed. I was sure my son wouldn’t want to try another one. I was wrong.Where I saw collapsing roof he saw candy sliding toward his mouth. Where I saw a messy kitchen he saw evidence of one heck of a good time. He let me know he definitely wanted to try again. And he was right. Last year, for our second house, I revised my idea of success. I was a little more careful about rolling and cutting my pieces. And voila! We ended up with a beautiful and delicious gingerbread house and a family tradition well on its way to being a favorite.
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