Gingerbread House - Recipes and Decor
I hope you are enjoying this special Holiday series. If this is your first time visiting, I am spending the month of December sharing Holiday recipes, tutorials, activities, and more. So far, I've shared a Winter-themed bucket list, a post about decorating for the Holidays, and an easy way to sweeten up hot chocolate. Make sure and check out any of these posts, if you missed them.
Today I am sharing my favorite post so far in the series, it's all about gingerbread houses! This weekend my husband and I got into the festive spirit and worked on our annual gingerbread house. It's something we've done before and love doing together.
This year we did things a little differently. In the past we've purchased gingerbread house kits, but this time we decided to bake our own pieces. I found a cookie cutter set from Wilton to help form the gingerbread house. I also made my own royal icing, instead of using what comes in the kit. The icing recipe I made was like cement, it did a great job holding the house together.
We had a blast putting together the gingerbread house, so I definitely wanted to share the recipes we used. Baking the pieces ourselves added such a special touch to the house, we definitely will do it this way again. I did take a bit of a shortcut, though, by using a gingerbread mix. We aren't actually eating the house, so I decided to use the box mix instead of completely by scratch. If you go this route, Make sure and use the recipe on the box for the gingersnap cookies, though, you don't want the soft ones for the house.
Here are the recipes I used for the gingerbread house.
Gingerbread House cookie ingredients:
- Gingerbread cookie mix
- 2 tbs all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup hot water
- 2 tbs melted butter
Gingerbread House cookie directions
- Mix together cookie mix, melted butter, flour, and water using a dough hook.
- Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 mins
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Flour the counter or parchment paper and rolling pin to prevent dough from sticking
- Roll out dough to 1/4 in thick
- Cut out shapes with cookie cutter - two of each shape. If you don't have a set of gingerbread house cookie cutters, you can find tons of templates online. Just print and cut them out and then use it to cut out the cookie dough.
- Place parchment paper on cookie sheet
- Spread out cookie pieces out on cookie sheet and bake for 12 mins
Royal Icing ingredients :
- 4 egg whites
- 4 cups powdered sugar
Royal Icing directions:
- Separate eggs and place egg whites from 4 eggs in stand mixer
- Beat egg whites until frothy using whisk attachment
- Slowly add powdered sugar, mixing on medium speed. Mix until stiff peaks are formed, at least 8 minutes. The icing should be glossy and thick.
Once the cookies are cooled, and you have made the royal icing, you can start decorating the pieces. We started by covering the two roof pieces with icing and candy.
Use royal icing to draw features onto the cookie pieces and decorate with candy.
Let house dry at least 30 minutes
Hope you enjoyed this post! I love gingerbread houses (and cookies), so it was a blast to work on. Keep checking back for posts in this series.. I'm working on some new recipes so I hope to be sharing a Christmas cake that's a favorite of mine, along with some simple sweet and salty candy for the Holidays.
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