Gingerbread Houses

This year, we not only made gingerbread men (and women) as I noted in a previous post, but we also made some gingerbread houses. Normally I don't do quite so much baking but the furnace was broken again (it needed a new circuit board) and the we were waiting on the right part. Actually our repair person ordered the part only to have it shipped wrong a few times now. They finally came on Wednesday. In the meanwhile, I was baking my little heart out to warm up the house, and thanking God for good friends who graciously lent space heaters.

This summer while garage saling, I found this cool little gem: A pampered chef stoneware gingerbread house mold.

I've made gingerbread houses without one too--just cut your dough to the right size, bake on parchment paper, and trim it so the sides are square--but this made it that much easier. Usually I'd wind up with sides that didn't match up the other way. Just following my previously given Gingerbread recipe!


I baked these on Monday (all day monday, to be exact). I made enough to make 5 gingerbread houses. I just let them sit on racks and cool until Tuesday, when I began to make the icing cement.

The icing cement is made by first frothing up 2 egg whites, 1/8tsp of Cream of Tartar (available in the spice section), and 2T of water. There's another recipe I've seen that uses Meringue powder, if you are overly concerned about raw egg whites. I've not had it dry as hard, though.

Next, I added 3C. of powdered sugar, one cup at a time, and blended it on high for five minutes. I actually set a timer to make sure I did it long enough. You want the icing to be stiff.

I filled my pastry bag with frosting, and began to pipe on a Right Angle onto my plate.


I also piped the sides of my pieces where the sides would meet, with a little help from my daughter, Esther.

I gently stood up one front, and one side, and then did the other front and side, while piping on another right angle.


The roof is the trickiest. Be GENEROUS with the icing cement. Pipe it all around the top edges of the sides and front/back of the house. Then I placed one side, then the other onto the house, and piped another generous glob of icing in between the two roof parts.


These I let set overnight, as the icing cement, as the name implies, dries nice and hard, into something that my son observed looks and feels like bathroom caulk. And yet, it's edible!!!

the next day, knowing that Gingerbread is made to be shared :-)), we invited over our neighbors to help us decorate. We had my mother in law's leftover halloween candy, and some candy I got from the store that was on clearance following last month's holiday. Gummy bears, by far, are the easiest to work with as is "gummi-anything".

I made up some more of the Icing Cement, and gave each child group a small bowl of it...and from there we dipped the candy into the icing and onto the gingerbread houses. We went sort of freestyle with it ;).



Someone I know told me they usually thinly slice half-frozen 3 Muskateer bars using a mandoline slicer to make shingles. We didn't get quite so fancy. We had, as you can see, candy corn, gum drops, and gummy bears, and some banana runts, sweet tarts, and someone ate the licorice. LOL

We each took a Gingerbread house, and we are giving the other three to the pastors at our church.