Winter Wonderland Gingerbread House
Create your own winter wonderland with a wonderful gingerbread hourse centrepiece for Christmas, both adults and children will adore it.
Ingredients
375g Unsalted Butter
300g Dark Muscovado Sugar
150g Golden Syrup
900g Plain Flour
1 Tbsp Bicarbonate of Soda
2 Tbsp Ground Ginger
For the icing
3 Egg Whites
675g Icing Sugar (sifted)
3 Tsp Lemon Juice
To decorate
A Small Handful of Glazed Cherries
1 x 30cm/12in square cake board
- Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6 (fan 180C).
- Melt the butter, sugar and syrup together in a large pan. Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger together into a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour in the melted butter mixture, stir it in and, when cool enough to handle, knead to a stiff dough.
- Divide the mixture into five equally-sized pieces, cut one of these pieces in half (so you have six pieces in total). Roll each piece out on a sheet of greaseproof paper to ¾cm/⅓in thick. Cut out the sections for the roof, sides, front and back of the house. Slide onto three baking trays lined with baking parchment.
- Cut out the windows on the sides of the house. Using a knife, cut out the door on the front and back of the house and place the doors separately on the baking trays.
- Re-roll the trimmings and use to cut out the front Christmas tree. Bake the gingerbread for 7-8 minutes.
- Remove the gingerbread from the oven. Trim the windows if the mixture has spread.
- Return to the oven and continue to cook for 3-4 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes, then trim around the to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.
- For the icing, whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until frothy. Using a wooden spoon or a hand-held electric mixer on slow speed, add the icing sugar a tablespoonful at a time. Stir in the lemon juice and beat the icing until it is very stiff and white and stands up in peaks. Cover the surface with a damp cloth if not using immediately.
- Spoon a little of the icing into a piping bag fitted with a small plain nozzle and pipe frames around the windows, doors and stars to decorate. Spoon six tablespoons of the icing over the cake board and, using a palette knife, spread the icing to cover the board with a snow effect and to create a base to stick the house on to.
- Pipe some icing along the wall edges and join the house together on the iced cake board. Leave the icing to dry and harden for a minimum of four hours, but preferably overnight.
- Once dry, place two glaze cherries on the front of the house with some icing to secure.
- Cut the pointed ends of the cocktail sticks into 1cm/½in pieces (you should have 12 small pointed pieces). Push the blunt end of the cocktail stick pieces into the sloping edges of the front and back of the house, leaving the pointed ends sticking out to act as peg supports to attach the roof. (Remember to remove the sharp cocktail sticks from your gingerbread house before eating it, to avoid a choking hazard.) Pipe icing between the cocktail sticks and fix the two roof panels onto the house. Pipe icing around the base and edges of the chimney and attach to the roof.
- To decorate, pipe icing along the apex and edges of the roof to look like snow. Stick the front door in place with icing. Decorate the Christmas tree with piped icing and fix onto the cake board with icing and gingerbread props.
