EntranceMaking a gingerbread house at home. Making your own gingerbread house for Christmas, a unique recipe
Section "TABLE SETTING, DECORATION OF DISHES, ETIQUETTE"
The section helps to decorate a variety of dishes with minimal effort.
Chapter
3rd page of the chapter
gingerbread house
DIY gingerbread houses, step by step photos
Part 3
BUILD A gingerbread house, castle or palace
Recipes with step by step photos
As well as:
Cookie and waffle houses
gingerbread trees
Painted New Year's gingerbread and gingerbread valentines
If the rolling pin is wooden, soak it several times at intervals of 1-2 hours with a generous amount of sunflower oil(it will soak into the wood), then let it "dry out" for 5-7 days ( sunflower oil polymerizing, hardening in air, unlike olive oil).
After impregnation and drying, a wooden rolling pin (or a wooden cutting board) will become "eternal", non-hygroscopic and easy to clean.
A very useful technique when rolling out dough:
The process of making gingerbread houses is of the same type and necessarily includes rolling out the gingerbread dough into a layer of the required thickness for subsequent cutting out of it.
When rolling out the dough with a rolling pin into a layer, it is convenient to use the slats of the desired thickness laid on the sides, as shown in the photo.
This allows you to make the layer perfectly even in thickness and with straight side edges (which significantly reduces the number of trimmings when cutting the house).
Details of gingerbread structures are glued together:
- or white or dark chocolate heated in a water bath (this is the most convenient to use, strong enough and quickly hardening connection),
- or thickly boiled (caramel) hot sugar syrup or sugar fondant (see) with the addition of citric acid (a drop of such syrup hardens on a saucer; lemon acid prevents the crystallization of sugar and is added to obtain a pleasant sweet and sour taste syrup),
- or - sugar-protein drawing mass.
It is convenient to use glass jars of suitable dimensions, partially filled with water for their stability.
Various patterns are drawn in white and tinted in different colors and imitations of snow are made.
For drawing and snow, you can also use the confectionery.
Snow sprinkles are represented by powdered sugar (it is carefully sprinkled through a strainer) or coconut flakes, or a mixture of them.
Decorative multi-colored figurines for decorating compositions with houses can be sculpted from densely diluted, from and from.
Windows of gingerbread houses:
- or before assembly, draw on baked parts,
- or they are made in the form of open slots, decorated along the edges or; they do this more often if they fill the house with sweets, which are beautifully visible through the cut openings;
- or from the inside, close the slots of the windows with thin slices of marmalade, gluing them:
- or make candy windows (stained glass windows): for this, the finished baked parts with cut windows are placed face up on lightly oiled foil, the windows are covered with crushed candy and placed for 1-2 minutes in the oven, heated to 220-250 gr. C, where candy crumbs are fused into a thin monolithic layer.
The process of fusing candy crumbs in the oven is very short, and it must be monitored visually in order to remove the parts from the oven in time. Because shortly after the melting of the candy, they will begin to burn out rather quickly into a bitter brown sugar burnt, which should be excluded.
By filling different parts of the window with candies of different colors, you can get beautiful multi-colored stained-glass windows that will look especially impressive when illuminated from the inside.
Lollipop windows also decorate "stained glass" cookies from shortcrust pastry or "stained glass" gingerbread.
O stained glass cookies see at the end of this page.
Assembling a gingerbread house from parts with figured candy windows.
In this case, the parts are glued
Smoke from the chimney often depicted as cotton candy.
It is recommended to develop the design and drawings of your gingerbread house (castle, palace) on your own.
If you are not very good at architectural drawing, glue the made cardboard (or thick paper) patterns into a whole product and make sure that all the parts fit well together. Then separate the patterns and use for cutting gingerbread parts.
On this page we will look at several examples of building different gingerbread houses. We recommend reading them all.
Mastering the techniques used in their manufacture will allow you to build any house or a whole gingerbread palace to your liking.
USEFUL VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS:
Training gingerbread house
for beginner gingerbread house builders
- simple and beautiful
In its manufacture, all the main stages of gingerbread housing construction are shown.
We recommend that all work, from design, be carried out with children.
1. Designing a house and creating template drawings.
Let's draw on paper and cut out patterns (templates) of the details of the future gingerbread house:
2. Then we start preparing the dough.
Those who have never made gingerbread dough products should first bake homemade gingerbread cookies from it several times to gain experience, and only then make gingerbread house details from gingerbread dough.
Therefore, in this case, we will use not, but a suitable one with a baking powder.
See also recipes on page .
NOTE 1.
Without any experience, you can easily and simply use the ancient dough recipe for (perhaps this best dough for gingerbread). If desired, the following spices can be added to it, as well as dry berries ground into powder.
NOTE 2
In this recipe, to prepare the dough, you need liquid honey. If the honey is candied, i.e. crystallized (good honey candied no later than October 20 - see), it must first be melted with stirring in a hot water bath.
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On a baking sheet, heat the butter, molasses and honey, mix and cool slightly. |
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Lay the house front template on the pastry sheet and cut out the windows and door, side walls and roof. |
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Whip the egg whites into a strong foam. |
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Using a thin nozzle, also decorate the elements of the roof: draw borders along the ridge, and a grid-like pattern on the slopes of the roof. |
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Whisk the frosting again. |
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In the same way, install the second side and front walls of the house. |
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When the roof slopes are installed, there will most likely be a small gap where they meet. |
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Using a knife, remove excess glaze, which turned out at the junctions of the elements of the house. |
The roof of the house is tiled with cookies, the chimney is lined with halves of peanuts, the shutters are made of waffles, the porch with columns is made of candy.
Next to the house are trees made from waffle cups for ice cream and gingerbread cookies.
WE WILL NEED
CUTTING DETAILS
1. One square = 1 cm.
2. Redraw the pattern in full size in centimeters (more convenient on checkered paper).
3. All parts are made in 2 pieces, the pipe - 3 pieces.
4. Parts "1" belong to the first big house, parts "2" belong to the second small house.
5. The walls are baked from ginger dough.
6. The roof is baked from white dough.
7. One end of a large house is baked half from white, half from ginger dough (see).
The second end of a large house is baked from gingerbread dough.
The ends of a small house are baked only from gingerbread dough.
8. The chimney is baked from white dough.
WHITE DOUGH
By this recipe knead the dough once.
180-200 g butter
2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking soda quenched with vinegar
1 egg
3 cups wheat flour
1. In a large bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer for 30 seconds or until fluffy.
2. Add soda and sugar, beat until completely combined.
3. Add the egg and beat until completely combined.
4. Add flour and quickly knead the dough.
5. Cover the dough and refrigerate for approximately 2 hours.
6. After cooling, divide the dough in half (it is more convenient to roll out) and roll out with a rolling pin into a layer 5-6 mm thick. To prevent the dough from sticking to the table (to the board), be sure to sprinkle the table with flour.
7. Place a paper pattern of the corresponding part of the house on the rolled out layer and cut out the part from the dough along the contours.
8. Carefully transfer the part to a baking sheet (you can cover the baking sheet with foil). Put the paper pattern back on the part and, if the edges of the part are deformed during transfer, correct it.
9. Bake at t° 150 - 170°C for 5-7 minutes. When the part is slightly browned, it is ready.
10. Quickly remove the part from the oven, transfer it to the board and, after laying a pattern on it, align the edges (since there is soda in the dough, the dough moves a little when baking).
11. Cool the part.
12. Do the same with all the details that are baked from white dough. From the rest of the dough, it is necessary to form and bake small cookies - "pebbles", from which a "stone fence" will then be made near the house.
13. SPECIAL DETAILS - THE END OF THE BIG HOUSE
(white roof and ginger butt wall baked together):
13.1. Make a paper pattern of the end of a large house in two copies.
13.2. Cut one copy of the pattern along the dotted line of the roof and cut this part - the roof - from white dough (do not bake yet!).
13.3. Cut the lower part of the part - the wall of the end of the house from gingerbread dough (on the paper pattern, the part ends with a solid line located just above the dotted line, parallel to it).
13.4. Lay the gingerbread dough on top of the white along the border, as on a paper pattern. Lubricate the place of application with a little water for gluing and gently press.
13.5. Cut strips from the gingerbread dough (according to the size of the pattern) and glue it onto the white dough roof with water.
13.6. Carefully transfer the part to a baking sheet (can be covered with foil). Put a whole paper pattern on the part and correct the edges that were deformed when the part was transferred.
13.7. Bake at t ° 150-170 ° C, 5-7 minutes. When the part is slightly browned, it is ready.
13.8. Quickly remove the part from the oven, transfer it to the board and, after laying its whole pattern on it, align the edges.
13.9. Cool the item.
GINGER DOUGH
According to this recipe, knead the dough twice, each batch separately.
80-100 g butter
one and a half cups of sugar
one and a half teaspoons of ginger
one and a half teaspoons of cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda quenched with vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 cups honey
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups wheat flour
1 cup bran or 3 cups wheat flour
1. In a large bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer for 30 seconds until fluffy. Add sugar, ginger, cloves, quenched soda and salt, beat until completely combined.
2. Add egg, molasses and lemon juice, beat until completely combined.
3. Add flour and knead the dough.
4. Wrap the dough in polyethylene and keep in a cold place for 3 hours.
Christmas trees
Christmas trees we will have waffle cones for ice cream. If there are no cones, then we will make Christmas trees ourselves - we will bake them from white dough.
1. Cut out circles of different diameters from the rolled out dough - from the largest (bottom of the Christmas tree) to the smallest (top). We make cloves at the edges of each circle with a knife. Thus we get jagged circles.
2. We bake the circles and fold them in a pyramid from a larger circle to a smaller one, smearing with icing. To make the Christmas tree taller, round small cookies, also baked from white dough, can be laid between large parts.
3. In the same way, we collect a few more Christmas trees.
4. We decorate the finished Christmas trees: we place the icing, tinted green, in a bag and squeeze it out, circling the jagged edges; sprinkle the Christmas trees with multi-colored sprinkles, powder the top of the strainer with powdered sugar - "snowball".
FOUNDATION OF THE HOUSE
Bake a large cake base on which it will be convenient to assemble the house. The base area should be larger than the area of \u200b\u200bthe house (you can bake the base in parts and glue it with glaze).
GLAZE
Glaze is used immediately, so do it after the parts of the house are ready for assembly. Don't double the recipe right away; make a second batch of frosting only when needed.
3 egg whites
750 grams sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
food colorings
1. In a deep bowl, beat the egg white, add sugar, vanilla.
2. Beat with an electric mixer on high speed for 7-10 minutes or until very stiff. Glaze should not be runny. To prevent the icing from drying out, cover the bowl with it with a damp towel.
3. Glaze for gluing parts is conveniently applied using a bag (2 bags are obtained from the A4 file). Fold the bag and fasten with a stapler along the entire length so that it does not unwind. Fill the bag with icing and, wrapping the top, fasten it with a stapler (so that the icing does not come out). So that icing does not leak out of the holes from the stapler brackets and does not stain your hands, the bag filled with icing must be wrapped with sticky thin plastic wrap, twisting it at the top. Straight or obliquely cut off the sharp corner of the bag, just a little bit.
4. If the glaze does not adhere well to the part, moisten the glued areas with water using a brush. Glaze can be applied to both gluing points.
5. Glaze of a different color (for finishing windows, Christmas trees), paint with dry dye.
The more precisely you make the parts of the house, the easier it will be to fit them together.
DECORATION
Baked and cooled parts can be decorated before assembly, carefully checking that the level of the windows is the same height on all the details of the walls. And you can decorate after assembly.
If you are decorating before assembly, you must be VERY CAREFUL during assembly so as not to damage the painted windows and decorations.
1. WALLS
2. PORCH
Cut another square cookie across into two identical rectangles and glue them to the first triangle in the form of the letter " /\ " ().
ASSEMBLY
COMBINE ALL THE PARTS WITHOUT GLUEING THEM AND TRIM, ADJUST IF SOMETHING DOESN'T MATCH (WHILE NOTHING IS LUBRICATED WITH CREAM OR GLAZE, IT IS MORE CONVENIENT TO DO).
House.
Prepare the "foundation of the house". Align the parts as shown in the picture. Glue the parts to the base of the house and glue them together with glaze. Wait until all joints are firmly fixed. For reliability, as the house is assembled, the joints of the walls can be additionally coated with glaze from the inside of the house.
Roof.
When the ends and walls are securely dry, you can glue the details of the roof. Hold them until the frosting dries.
Chimney.
Glue together the three parts of the chimney and glue them to the end of the small house. Brush with icing and top with toasted and peeled peanut halves.
Roof tiles.
Spread the icing evenly on the surface of the roof and arrange the cookie pads in a checkerboard pattern. The icing should be thick, otherwise the pads will crawl down, they will have to be held for a long time. Liquid glaze can be mixed again with powdered sugar. Mask the uneven edges of the "tiled roof" by edging with glaze. From the top of the strainer, powder the roof with powdered sugar - "snowball".
FINAL STROKE
Icicles.
Using a bag of icing, make an imitation of icing: touch the tip to the edge of the roof, gently squeezing the bag - the icing will drain, forming an icicle. Repeat the steps along all the edges of the roof and along the canopy above the front door.
Yard.
By gluing the "pebbles" with glaze, make a "fence". Install Christmas trees in the yard. You can make "drifts" - "pebbles" grease with icing and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Fantasize!
What should eventually happen - see the title. Design options:
:
For test:
- honey - 1 glass,
- wheat flour - 2-2.5 cups,
- rye flour - 1 cup,
- egg yolks - 2 pcs.,
- butter - 50 g,
- soda - 0.5 tsp,
- ground cinnamon - 1 teaspoon,
- ground ginger - 1 teaspoon,
- ground cardamom - 1/4 teaspoon,
Glaze for gluing:
- egg white - 1 pc.,
- powdered sugar - 1 cup,
- lemon juice - 8-10 drops.
1. Heat honey and oil over low heat until liquid.
2. Mix a glass of wheat flour with ginger and cinnamon, pour into the honey-oil mixture, mix thoroughly so that there are no lumps. Cool slightly.
3. rye flour mix with the rest wheat flour and soda. Whip the egg yolks. Pour the yolks into the honey mixture that has cooled to a warm state, grind, then pour in the flour.
4. Quickly knead the dough. The dough should be non-sticky, plastic, dense. Divide the dough into 2-3 parts.
5. Roll out the dough on a floured table to a thickness of 0.5-0.7 cm, cut out according to the template for the blank for the gingerbread house. Transfer the blanks to a baking sheet, spread out at a distance of at least 2 cm from each other.
6. Bake gingerbread blanks at a temperature of +220°C for about 8 minutes; take care not to burn.
7. Cool the baked parts of the gingerbread house. They can be stored until the house is assembled for several days in a closed cardboard box at room temperature.
Assembly and decoration of the house.
8. Caramel windows. Place the pieces with windows on a baking sheet lined with foil. hard candy caramel grind in a coffee grinder and pour into the windows flush with the thickness of the parts. Place the baking sheet in the preheated oven for 2-4 minutes to melt the caramel. Remove from oven, cool until caramel hardens, remove foil.
9. Glaze for gluing. Beat the egg white until it doubles in volume. When whipping the protein, gradually pour in powdered sugar in small portions, and then add lemon juice. The icing is ground until white and fluffy. If desired, the glaze is tinted in the desired color with cocoa powder, burnt sugar, beetroot or cranberry juice, turmeric, food coloring. Prepare the glaze in small portions, as it quickly hardens. If a special pastry bag is not available, thin strips of glaze can be applied from a 10-20 ml medical syringe with the needle removed.
10. To decorate a gingerbread house, icing, nuts, multi-colored dragee candies, confectionery sprinkles, coconut flakes, marmalade, chocolate, candied fruits are used. Decoration elements are attached to the gingerbread base with glaze and allowed to dry.
11. On a gingerbread base sheet, the house is assembled. The parts are glued together with glaze gradually, pressing them well against each other and fixing for 8-15 minutes. At the assembly stage, you can put gifts inside the house - gingerbread, sweets.
12. The finished house is sprinkled with "snow" - powdered sugar or coconut flakes.
In such a beautiful palace it will be cozy and playful...
and real princesses:
In this photo, the children are not too surprised by the view of the wonderful gingerbread palace,
because took an active part in its construction.
And each of them brought their own creative idea of jewelry.
Therefore, their views are not so much enthusiastic as carefully evaluating the created work.
After taking pictures next to the palace, they will happily break it down, starting from the roof.
Of course, in the course of eating, you will have to put additional dolls in order to have enough for everyone.
View of the gingerbread palace from the back:
NOTE. Curved gingerbread products (for example, elements of the walls of the round towers of the castle in the photo) are baked on round, heat-resistant objects covered with cooking paper, lightly oiled, (for example, on empty metal cans). Cut dough pieces 6-8 mm thick are laid out on top in 1/4 turn, but not more than 1/3 turn. At 1/2 turn gingerbread dough will drip off during baking.
How to glue baked gingerbread elements into an intricate building - see above.
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For test:
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1 cup of sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp dry ground garlic
- 1 cup sugar syrup (recipe below)
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vinegar
- about 5 cups of flour (until you get a thick dough)
Sugar Syrup Ingredients:
- 200 g sugar
– 200 g honey
- 70 g butter
- 1/3 cup boiling water
Glaze Ingredients:
- 1 egg white
- about 1 cup icing sugar (until you get a thick mixture)
- a little lemon juice or citric acid
Ingredients for caramel glue:
- 100 g sugar
- 2 tbsp. tablespoons of water (and boil everything until thick)
1. Let's cook sugar syrup. In a metal saucepan, melt 3 tbsp. sugar until brown. Remove from heat and cool slightly while stirring. Pour in 1/3 cup boiling water, stir well, add the rest of the sugar, and put on fire. Bring to a boil and until the sugar is completely dissolved.
2. In a very large saucepan, beat the margarine with a mixer. Add sugar, baking powder, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon and garlic. Keep whisking well.
3. Gradually pour in the sugar syrup, while continuing to beat, beat in the eggs and vinegar. Beat until a homogeneous mass is formed. Start adding flour while continuing to beat with the mixer until the mixer can turn the dough. Dust a work surface with flour, place the dough on it and continue kneading with your hands. The dough should be very thick. Divide into thirds, cover and refrigerate for 3 hours.
4. Now divide each piece of dough in half again (you will get six pieces). Spread baking paper on a baking sheet, put a piece of dough on it, knead it first with your hands. Then cover the dough with a second sheet of paper and roll it out with a rolling pin into a layer 3 mm thick. Remove the top sheet, put the pattern of the house on top and cut it into shape. The scraps can then be used for small decorations, figurines, gingerbread men, etc.
5. Bake in preheated to 180 gr. C oven for 7-9 minutes until the edges are slightly browned. Cool down. Repeat with the rest of the dough pieces and pattern sheets.
6. While the dough is cooling, prepare the icing and caramel glue. Separate the protein from the yolk very carefully. Beat with a fork until light foam forms. Continue whisking, gradually adding powdered sugar until the volume increases and the consistency of thick sour cream is obtained.
7. When the dough has cooled well, remove it from the pan. We will paint each individual wall with glaze. On the roof, until the glaze has hardened, you can stick waffles or sweets imitating tiles.
8. Now we are preparing caramel glue. Caramel glue is actually the same sugar syrup (which we prepared above), but more concentrated and without honey and oil.
9. Until the caramel glue has hardened (it can be kept on a saucepan with steaming water), we dip the edges of the walls of the house into it, which we need to glue together. When the walls are glued, and the house is already on the table, in order to glue the roof, we grease the upper cut of the walls with caramel glue and put the roof on. We cover the seams with glaze.
NOTE. Rounded gingerbread blanks (for example, for the walls of a round tower) are baked with a size of no more than 1/3 of a turn, laid during baking on round heat-resistant forms of the desired diameter.
When the size of the workpiece is more than 1/3 of a turn, during baking, the gingerbread dough inevitably runs off and its predetermined shape is distorted.
Optimal baking of rounded parts in 1/4 turn - in this case, during baking, a layer of gingerbread dough laid on it from a cylindrical shape is excluded.
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For test:
- 350 g flour
- 130 g butter
- 2 yolks
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp ginger
- 0.5 tsp soda
- 100 g sugar
- 4 tablespoons honey
- salt
For icing sugar:
- 250 g of powdered sugar
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 protein
The most important thing is to make the correct template (drawing) of the house according to your imagination.
It is better to make it out of cardboard and then assemble it to fit it exactly.
When you have your template ready, transfer all patterns onto baking paper.
Now we prepare the dough: mix flour with spices, salt and soda. Then add soft butter and grind into crumbs.
Beat the yolks with a fork and pour into the dough, immediately add sugar and honey.
Knead a tight dough, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for an hour. Then we roll out into a layer (I got 4) part of the dough and bake until golden brown and while the cake is soft, cut out the details of our house and one cake for the stand according to the templates (our composition will stand on it), and you can cut out cookies from the leftovers.
IT IS NECESSARY TO DO IT QUICKLY, BECAUSE COOLING, BECOMES HARD AND MAY CRASH.
When all the details are ready and cooled, we connect them sugar icing, i.e. we are building a house. Then we decorate as we like.
The dough in the recipe is enough for small house and 10 cookies.
If you increase the proportions of the dough, making it larger, you can build a big house, and put a cake inside, a small one on a stand can be used to decorate the cake or let the children gobble it up.
Features of this test, unlike honey for houses, are that it does not get stale for a long time.
TIP: DO NOT ROLL OUT THE DOUGH TOO THIN, THE IDEAL THICKNESS IS 0.5 CM!
For icing sugar Thoroughly grind everything with a wooden spoon until a thick homogeneous mass is obtained.
Paint each baked part, dry the icing well and only then glue it.
After gluing and curing the joints, make a finish: masking the seams, applying "icicles", imitation of snow, etc.
Like gingerbread houses, sleighs are glued together with sugar-protein drawing mass (icing) or hot thickly boiled sugar icing, or hard chocolate (black or white) melted in a water bath.
Painted gingerbread figures to decorate gingerbread compositions or to serve with tea. Such figurines are cut out of a layer of dough with a knife using a cardboard template, then baked and decorated with icing.
Children's creativity - gingerbread decoration for the Christmas tree:
Sleigh options:
In some countries, various sets of ready-made parts are sold for self-assembly of gingerbread compositions. This house is assembled from the following set:
FINNISH gingerbread house wall template
FINNISH gingerbread house roof template
Gingerbread Tree Template
GINGERBOOK MAN TEMPLATE
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For the gingerbread dough:
- 140 g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- 100 g sugar
– 1 egg
- 1 tsp soda
- 100 ml of light molasses (golden syrup) or, even better, fructose syrup
- 1 tsp ground cardamom seeds (you need to grind the seeds from two pods in a mortar)
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp grated orange peel
- 450 g plain flour
NOTE. Instead of all the spices, you can add ginger - then you get a ginger house.
For glaze:
- 400 g powdered sugar, sifted
- 2 egg whites
- 2 tsp lemon juice
For decoration:
- 4-5 orange or yellow icicles crushed with a rolling pin
– 3 packs of Smarties (multi-colored chocolates)
- 400 g marshmallows or marshmallows
As well as:
- you will need a board on which you will build a house,
- four trays
- and a few clean jars or bottles with which you can prop up the still-dry glued walls of the house and other structural elements so that they do not fall apart.
- Cookie cutters in the shape of trees and little men for baking figured products from gingerbread dough that decorate the composition will also come in handy.
NOTES.
- For cutting parts, be sure to use pre-prepared templates, otherwise the walls of the house will not fit together.
- Choose the design of the house and decorate the house the way you want - you can make a multi-colored range using only white icing like snow.
In a cool, dry place, the house can be stored for up to 2 weeks.
PRELIMINARY BY YOUR IMAGINATION TO DEVELOP AND CUT TEMPLATES FOR THE gingerbread house.
In the wall templates, provide openings for windows and doors, which we will then fill with crushed candies and fuse them in the oven.
Step 1. First, make the Finnish gingerbread dough. Put the butter and 50 g of sugar in a bowl, beat with an electric mixer.
Step 2 Beat the egg with the remaining 50 g of sugar until it resembles lightly whipped cream.
Add soda and molasses to the oil. Then add egg mixture.
add spices, orange peel and flour, and mix until you get an elastic soft dough.
Form into a ball, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Step 3 While the dough is chilling, cut out templates from parchment or baking paper based on your templates.
Preheat oven to 220 gr. FROM.
Step 4 Line four baking sheets with parchment.
Tear off an orange-sized piece from the dough. Roll it out on a floured table to the thickness of a coin and cut out the wall.
Roll out the scraps and gradually roll out and cut out the remaining parts of the house.
Using a spatula, transfer them to a baking sheet.
You will need to cut out two side walls, a front and a back wall, two roof pieces and four pieces for the chimney (the bottom walls of the pipe should be in the shape of a triangle so that the sharp part of them enters the hole in the roof).
Cut out trees and people from dough.
Step 5 Roll out the remaining dough and scraps directly on the parchment and cut into an oval about 25 cm in size. This is the "garden" on which the house will stand.
Place on parchment on a baking sheet.
Step 6 Cut a door into one of the walls, then cut windows where you want.
Cover window and door openings with an even layer of crushed candy.
Bake the cookies in batches for 6 to 8 minutes (garden bakes a few minutes longer) until the edges of the cookies are brown and the candies are melted.
For cookies perfect shape, attach templates to it and cut off all the places where the cookies have spread.
Let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.
Step 7 While the cookies are cooling, make the frosting by mixing the icing sugar with egg white and lemon juice.
This is the "glue" with which we will connect the walls and decorate the house.
Step 8 Now get the board for the house and put the banks on which you can rely on the glued walls.
Transfer the icing to a piping bag fitted with a very small tip, or place in a plastic bag and cut off the small tip at the corner.
Starting with a small wall, squeeze a thin strip of glaze along the bottom edge and attach it to the "ground".
Press it firmly against the board for a few minutes, and then prop it up with a jar until the icing hardens.
Step 9 Lubricate the lower part of the long wall with glaze, place on the lower part of the house and press firmly until it gets stronger.
Then put up two other walls.
Step 10 Attach roof. Pass the glaze over the corners of one part of the roof and the upper edges of the walls, attach the lid to the walls and press firmly.
Put a jar to support the roof.
Repeat with the second part of the roof.
Connect all the pieces for the pipe and attach to the icing on the roof.
Step 11 Spread the icing over the surface of the roof and chimney, dripping the icing onto the walls to create a snowy effect. Then put smarties on top. Smear with glaze "garden" and draw facial features. Attach white marshmallows to the icing all around the garden to create a fence.
Place people and trees everywhere.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Step 12 Put the finished gingerbread house in a prominent place and admire it for a long time, show it to all your friends and acquaintances.
:
– 1 cup flour (flour should always be sifted before kneading any dough)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon of grated ginger root (our gingerbread will turn out spicy and spicy, you can take less ginger to taste)
- 2 tablespoons softened butter
- 1 tablespoon liquid honey
- 1 tablespoon of milk
1. PREPARING THE DOUGH.
Mix all ingredients.
Knead the dough thoroughly with your hands for about 10 minutes so that it becomes elastic - this is the main thing in preparing any gingerbread dough.
Roll into a ball and leave to lie down for 10-15 minutes, but no more.
2. TEMPLATES FOR MINI-HOUSE.
For the house you will need 6 templates:
- 2 for the roof,
– 2 for front and rear facades,
– 2 for end walls.
Draw patterns on thick paper and cut them out with scissors.
If you want to make houses with windows (with empty holes or filled with candy, marmalade), provide them on the templates.
3. CUTTING DETAILS.
Roll out the dough into a layer 5 mm thick and circle around the contour with a sharp knife or, which is much more convenient when cutting the dough, use pizza roller cutter.
To facilitate subsequent assembly (so that the roof does not move out when gluing), you can make two small holes for threads in both parts of the roof before baking.
When assembling, the baked parts of the roof are simply tied with a thread.
After the adhesive glaze has hardened, remove the threads and close these technological holes in the roof with glaze.
BAKING DETAILS.
Bake the details of the house in a pre-heated oven at a temperature of 170 gr. From about 7 min.
Then let cool completely under a folded towel.
To cut the dough in narrow places, you can successfully use a screwdriver.
When you want to please your loved ones and bake them something truly fabulous, you can safely try to bake a gingerbread house. This delicious dessert does not require special skills in baking, however, you will have to devote some time to it to create a real delicious fairy tale.
Gingerbread house recipe step by step
The gingerbread house itself "Skazka" consists of three main components:
- Suitable small multi-colored sweets;
- Protein glaze (icing);
- And gingerbread base.
From sweets, ready-made round candies like M & M "s are best suited. But the icing and dough need to be prepared.
Preparing the dough for the gingerbread house:
There are a lot of options for a suitable dough for a gingerbread house. The main condition is, when choosing a recipe, that the dough is plastic and shapes can be cut out of it. For this purpose, you can use it with a minimum of ingredients, or you can knead traditional dough for the New Year's gingerbread house.
Option 1. Honey-spicy dough
You will need:
3 cups sifted high-quality flour;
4 tablespoons of honey;
100 g of dry granulated sugar;
50 g of fatty butter;
2 eggs;
1 teaspoon (without a slide) of regular baking soda;
2 tablespoons (optional) cognac;
50 ml of water;
1 teaspoon spices (cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg);
baking sheets;
parchment paper;
Gingerbread house templates.
Step by step cooking:
Pour water into a deep bowl. Send honey, sugar and butter here.
All ingredients must be heated. It is very important to ensure that the mixture does not boil. The approximate temperature of warming up is about 70 degrees.
Then spices and half of the measured flour must be sent to the mass. We do not remove from the fire!
Stirring quickly with a spoon or spatula, you need to brew the dough, avoiding the formation of lumps.
Advice. If, nevertheless, lumps could not be avoided, a sieve can save the situation. Just wipe the finished mixture through it, and the mass will become evenly homogeneous.
In this form, the future test must be allowed to cool. Then eggs and cognac are sent here.
And only then the remaining flour is added to the dough. At this stage, it must be kneaded well so that the mass is very smooth.
From ready dough roll up the ball, wrap it with cling film and send it to a cold place for 1 hour.
After that, you can cut out the future details of the house from the dough by rolling it out and using the templates.
It is necessary to bake all the details on a baking sheet covered with parchment, in an oven heated to 190 degrees, for 15-20 minutes.
Important! Make sure that the cakes do not dry out. When hot, they should be soft and only after cooling, the pastry hardens.
Option 2. Honey-ginger dough
You will need:
250 g fresh fat butter;
1 glass of dry granulated sugar;
80 g of natural honey;
2 fresh chicken eggs;
750 g of sifted high-quality flour;
1.5 tablespoons of ground ginger (can be replaced with fresh root, grated);
1.5 teaspoons of soda;
1.4 teaspoon of cloves;
1 teaspoon lemon juice;
baking sheets;
parchment paper;
Templates for the walls of the house.
Cooking:
Putting a deep bowl on water bath, mix sugar, spices and honey in it. The mass must be stirred frequently until the sugar is completely dissolved. After that, here, without stopping to warm up the mass, add eggs and oil. Now you need to mix everything well so that the dough turns out without lumps.
Next, add soda to the brewed dough and mix well again. And the final stage in the preparation of future cakes is the addition of sifted flour to the mass. After that, everything must be kneaded until the dough begins to lag behind the walls of the bowl.
In this form, the dough rolls into a ball and cools.
At this time, you can prepare a baking sheet and oven. We heat the oven to 180 degrees, and cover the baking sheets with parchment paper.
You will need more templates for the house. You can choose any options.
After that, the chilled dough needs to be rolled out and cut out of it for the design of the future gingerbread house. Bake individual parts for about 7 minutes.
Well, when all the cakes are baked, they need to be connected with the help of glaze, and then decorate.
Preparation of glaze (icing)
You will need:
1 egg white;
150 g of sifted powdered sugar;
1 teaspoon lemon juice.
Note: all components are listed in minimum proportions and required amount can be calculated based on how much finished glaze you need for decoration.
Cooking:
Using a whisk, beat the chilled protein, without trying to achieve a strong foam. The mass itself should be just frothy and white.
Then add powdered sugar to the protein and mix everything well.
At the end, add lemon juice to the icing and stir thoroughly again.
Assembling the house
Now let's figure out how to make a gingerbread house. To connect all the details, it is necessary, along the edge of the cake, to generously apply icing and attach to it the necessary detail of the future gingerbread house. In this form, the cakes to be connected must be held a little so that the icing grabs.
This is how all the details are connected: walls, roof and so on.
Then the house can be decorated.
To do this, the glaze is applied to a pastry bag with a not very thin tube nozzle. Drawings can be applied both to the already formed gingerbread house, and to its individual parts.
How to do it depends on your imagination. You can draw stripes, spirals, snowflakes, snow and other decorative elements. Well, on top of the finished gingerbread house, you can generously sprinkle with small sweets.
Here are some options for decorating an elegant dessert.
After that, the finished gingerbread house fairy tale can be served for the festive New Year's table. Surely, it will become one of the main decorations of the upcoming feast. Perfect for Christmas too!
By the way, with the help of these ingredients you can make not only a gingerbread house, but also bake gingerbread cookies and even Christmas tree decorations.
It all depends on your imagination and mood for the upcoming holiday magic, which will certainly happen if you really, really believe in it.
And Christmas always raises the question of what kind of interesting to cook. Especially always want to please the kids with something sweet and unusual. Just for such a case, gingerbread houses are suitable. They look somehow especially cute and a little magical. Gingerbreads themselves are not so interesting, but collected in a fabulous house - this is a completely different matter. The children are completely delighted with them.
Christmas recipes are varied, but they all have one thing in common: the dishes prepared according to them are always special, very tasty and beautiful. Take at least the same gingerbread huts. Appetizing, brightly and richly decorated, they create a wonderful atmosphere of warmth and comfort on the eve of the holiday. Let's talk about how to make one of these wonderful treats.
What products are needed for the test?
So, to prepare ginger, we should acquire the following products:
- Sugar - 0.5 cups.
- Butter - one pack (200-260 g).
- Honey - 90 grams.
- Ginger - 1.5-2 teaspoons. You can take it dry. It is sold in every supermarket.
- Flour - 0.75 kilograms.
- Soda - 1.3 tsp
- Lemon juice - 1 teaspoon.
- Cloves - 1.6 tsp
- Powdered sugar - 0.3 kilograms.
Gingerbread Houses: Cooking Recipe
Having prepared all the products, you can start kneading the dough. First, mix sugar and honey with all the spices that play an important role. Put the whole mixture on a small fire. The honey will gradually melt and the sugar will dissolve.
Then add butter and eggs. All this is thoroughly mixed on fire.
Then you need to add some soda. The mixture will definitely foam up. But you still mix it well.
Then add the sifted flour. Stir the contents of the bowl until the mass separates from the walls of the dish.
We got a very fragrant warm dough. Roll it into a ball and let it cool for 15 minutes.
Blanks for the house
So, we have prepared the dough for the gingerbread house. The next step is very interesting. Before you start baking, you should make preparations. We need to get shortcakes in the form of house details. Let's think about how to do it. The easiest way is to prepare paper patterns, and then cut out the components from the rolled out dough. Thus, we will bake not simple gingerbread, but walls, a roof, a pipe. If you want, make also the inhabitants of the tower: fairy-tale animals, a little man, you can even make a snowman ...
What sizes the future paper patterns will be, you decide. It all depends on how small or large your house will be from.
In addition, you can cut out a few more Christmas trees and a fence from thick cardboard to enclose the building. You will have a whole Christmas composition.
We would also advise you to bake the base for the house. The finished structure itself will be easier to install and fix on a blank shortcake than on cardboard.
Cutting pieces out of dough
We take the finished chilled dough and roll it out to a thickness of seven to eight millimeters. Then we impose our stencils and cut out the details with a knife. We do this very carefully so as not to damage the dough. Don't forget to cut windows and doors. With them, the house will be much more beautiful. But if it is difficult - it does not matter, it is quite possible to finish the necessary details and decor with cream. But we'll talk about this later. Until then...
We bake gingerbread
Before sending the dough to the oven, cover the baking sheet with baking paper, lay out the blank parts on it. We set the temperature on the stove to 190 degrees and boldly put the cookies inside. It will bake for no more than fifteen minutes. Just do not overdo it in the oven, otherwise the gingerbread cookies will be too dark and overdried.
Ready cookies should be cooled.
Glaze preparation
So, we already have ready-made parts, it remains only to assemble our gingerbread houses. How? To do this, prepare the glaze. We will cook it twice, because it will not work to collect everything and decorate it in one day.
The protein of one chilled egg should be beaten with half a glass of powdered sugar. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice (necessarily freshly squeezed). We put the resulting glaze in. We take a nozzle with the smallest slot and circle the contours of all windows, walls and doors with it. The roof can also be decorated in the form of tiles.
Let the glaze thicken. When it dries out a little, but has not completely hardened yet, you can decorate the details with multi-colored sprinkles, which are often used for Easter. Then the gingerbread houses will turn out even more bright and beautiful.
We start building a house
Let's leave our products to dry, and then proceed to the assembly of the tower. Change the nozzle on the pastry bag to a wider one. And then we begin to apply glaze to all future seams of the house. We carefully install each part of the facade in turn on a shortbread-stand, which we baked separately. Having connected the parts, hold them for a while so that they can stick together a little.
Thus, we gradually install all parts of the house, applying glaze to the sides and bottom of the structure. We let it all dry. The night will be enough.
For greater rigidity of the product, you can use toothpicks, supporting the walls with them until completely dry. And you can carefully fasten the corners with them, then covering it all with icing.
New roof glaze
The next day, you need to beat a new portion of the glaze, using the white of one egg. With its help, we will install the roof. First, put one part of it on a layer of cream, press it and wait until it sticks. Install the other half in the same way. Here you will definitely need to resort to the help of toothpicks so that the roof holds well. By the way, some people prefer to decorate already ready product so as not to spoil all the beauty during assembly. See for yourself whichever is more convenient for you.
The places of its connection are well smeared with glaze. Here are our gingerbread houses and ready.
Then you can install the details of the fence and the Christmas tree in the same way, put the pipe on the roof. The finished house should be left to dry, and then sprinkled with powdered sugar. Get a real winter composition. It all looks very fabulous and beautiful and quite pretends to be an ornament. holiday table. In general, Christmas recipes are such a miracle! They cheer you up already at the stage of reading, what can we say about the finished delicacy!
Instead of an afterword
What is good about such recipes is that children can be involved in the cooking process. They can decorate some details on their own, taste the first gingerbread. This will create a special, festive, New Year and Christmas atmosphere in the house. Gingerbread houses, the recipe of which we told you, is not a handmade! And what a!
Such a composition will become the pride and decoration of the festive table. Although, of course, this is not an easy task and will require a lot of time and patience from the sorceress-hostess. But what a result! What's more, you can add something of your own to the above recipe, and your gingerbread houses will look like no one else's. There is room for fantasy here. Just pure creativity. And how much joy for children! So try to create such a miracle for the holiday table, and you will not regret your choice!
Preparing for the Christmas holidays takes a lot of time. To please the children and add a festive mood, make a gingerbread house with your own hands. Dream up and decorate it with affordable products. Of course, you can buy ready-made blanks, but we will consider several options for independent “construction”.
The whole process can be divided into several stages, each of which should be given enough time so that the result does not disappoint. It is immediately worth noting that the structure hardens quickly. Therefore, it is better to bake a gingerbread house immediately before a feast or use it only for decoration.
How to prepare dough for a treat?
Ready cakes should keep their shape, so we will use shortbread dough. Stock up on various spices right away so that the festive Christmas house attracts attention with its aromas. There are two options for the finished test. Let's consider them in more detail.
1 way. For him we will take:
- 1 kg of baking flour;
- ½ tsp soda;
- 3 eggs;
- 200 g of sugar and butter;
- the same amount of honey;
- ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, allspice add ¼ tsp.
First, using a mortar, grind all the spices. Add some warmed honey granulated sugar, eggs and butter, which, if necessary, can be replaced with fat margarine. We mix everything well.
Separately, combine soda with flour, and then, gradually adding to the spicy mixture, knead the dough. We put it in a plastic bag and send it to the refrigerator for several hours.
2 way. The dough for the gingerbread house will turn out with chocolate flavor. The only thing that will have to be changed is to leave only ginger and cinnamon from the spices and remove exactly 4 tbsp from the composition. l. flour, which in this recipe will replace cocoa. We prepare the dough in the same way as in the first version.
Holiday dessert icing
Glaze can also be used in 2 types. But the main one is icing.
For cooking, prepare the following products:
- 2 egg whites;
- 2 tbsp. l. lemon juice;
- 400 g of powdered sugar.
To achieve a good result, use a mixer.
- Separate the proteins into a deep cup and turn on the device at first at a slow speed, increasing it over time.
- Gradually, in small portions, add powdered sugar.
- When the consistency began to hold its shape, pour in the lemon juice. You can use food coloring if you want to use multiple colors for decoration.
As an additional option, chocolate icing can also be used for the gingerbread house.
To cook it, take:
- 70 g margarine;
- by 4 tbsp. l. cocoa and sugar;
- 2 tbsp. l. milk.
Mix all this in an iron bowl and simmer a little over low heat until thickened. You can simply buy a chocolate bar and melt it using another bowl of hot water.
Cardboard blank - gingerbread house template
Now you can use our sizes, but if you wish, then dream up and draw a project on a piece of paper first. Then it is easy to implement the idea already on cardboard.
So, we will make blanks like this:
- the base of the house - 1 pc. (150x210 mm);
- side walls - 2 pcs. (107x120 mm);
- facade - 2 pcs. (with a wall height of 107 mm, 105x160 mm);
- roof - 2 pcs. (90x140 mm).
To make the house natural, be sure to cut out the windows and doors.
How to bake a gingerbread house?
Now we take our dough out of the refrigerator, divide it into 7 parts and roll it thinly on baking paper. We put one template on top and carefully cut it out with a knife or a special workpiece tool.
There is one trick that will help you immediately “insert frames” into windows. Take a couple of caramels, you need to crush them and fill the cut gaps under the glass with fragments. In the oven, everything will melt and immediately stick to the cake.
Having shifted the blanks together with paper on a flat sheet, we send them to the oven, which was preheated to 180 degrees. Usually it takes 6-8 minutes to bake.
When pulling out finished elements, do not forget that the cakes are brittle.
You can bypass all the above steps, buy ready-made blanks from Ikea and just glue them together. How to do this, we will analyze further.
We collect a gingerbread house with our own hands
Everyone understands that it is necessary to take edible products as glue. Some use cream icing to connect parts. But there is a danger that under its own weight the structure will fall apart.
Therefore, it is better to cook thick caramel syrup, for which you need:
- 80 ml of water;
- 200 g sugar.
All this is immediately placed in a small saucepan and boiled until brown. At the same time, do not stop stirring so that the mass does not burn.
Such a "glue" should be used while it is warm, because when it hardens, it immediately hardens and becomes unsuitable for the task.
Now we proceed to the responsible and, perhaps, the most difficult stage.
- We remove parchment from all blanks.
- Lay the base on a flat surface.
- We take the wall of the facade and with a plastic spatula or spoon (only carefully so as not to leave marks on the wall) apply “glue” to its lower part. We immediately press it to the base.
- Now we take the side wall, but we apply caramel not only to the lower part, but also to the end, which will be attached to the facade.
- Repeat these steps until all the details are in place. The roof is installed last.
Remember that the adhesive composition is best applied to a loose cake. After installation, the figure should be held a little so that the caramel “grabs”.
In the same way, you can glue the gingerbread house from Ikea. If you understand that you do not have time and the caramel freezes, then call an assistant. Children will be happy to work on "building" with you.
How to decorate a gingerbread house
When the main work is behind, we need to give our building a festive look. Why is icing used more often? Yes, because it has an attractive sheen and holds its shape. But, you can use not only it.
Often applied:
- powdered sugar;
- multi-colored flat sweets;
- chocolate M&M's;
- marmalade;
- various confectionery toppings;
- coconut shavings.
Having decided to decorate with white icing, transfer it to a pastry or plain plastic bag, making a small hole in its corner.
Decorating should start from the joints to hide bumps and glue that has come out due to careless actions. Then we proceed to decorate the windows and the door (if you also baked it and attached it). Here you can draw on the edges of the shutters and various patterns.
On the roof, we will draw a tile pattern or stick sweets on the protein glaze. You can also simply apply patterns, and make hanging icicles along the edge.
Christmas, New Year's house - ideas
If you have no experience or you just want to make your own, unlike gingerbread house with your own hands, then the suggested ideas may help you find “your” option:
- If you are making a rustic hut, don't forget to add a chimney. Draw different snowflakes. From the rest of the dough, cut out the figures of pets, which you place on the base of the house, you just have to make it bigger.
- Want to keep the lights on at home? Put a candle inside, and for the convenience of lighting it, do not glue the roof to the walls.
- The shape of the house does not have to be rectangular and even. Perhaps you want to embody the idea of \u200b\u200b"hut on chicken legs." Then you need Baba Yaga, which is easy to mold all from the same dough.
- A multi-storey gingerbread house is also not difficult to decorate. Suffice it to recall foreign films in which people use colorful garlands, signs and billboards. If you wish, everything should work out for you, and the idea will become original.
- You can assemble a yurt from triangular shortcakes, and place edible figurines with deer and sleighs nearby.
- If you have experience, then try to assemble a carousel that will need a colorful design. Use candies and marmalade here.
When there are a lot of helpers, it’s really possible to make a whole town of gingerbread houses or build a whole fairy-tale castle. Stay kids at heart at least this holiday season and let your imagination run wild!
A wonderful tradition of making a gingerbread house with your own hands before the New Year and Christmas holidays came to our country not so long ago from Europe. The art of creating these edible architectural masterpieces originated in Germany in the 19th century and quickly gained popularity, spreading to neighboring European countries. Gingerbread houses have not only become a must festive decoration human dwellings, but also firmly settled in Christmas markets and special exhibitions, where you could even get some nice prize for them. So, for more than 20 years, in the charming Norwegian town of Bergen, shortly before Christmas, a real gingerbread city has been opened, for which local residents create edible exhibits of amazing beauty and originality.
An important prerequisite for the emergence of a culture of gingerbread houses was the creation back in the Middle Ages of a special type of dough, products from which did not get stale for a long time and remained edible even a couple of weeks after baking. Gingerbread dough and making houses from it allowed people not only to decorate their houses for the holidays, but also to enjoy these later. delicious decorations to the delight of all family members, young and old. In addition, this is a very fragrant, plastic and very easy-to-prepare dough, which is a real pleasure to work with for both beginners and advanced cooks.
Today I want to tell you in detail how to make a gingerbread house with my own hands, be sure to connect my friends, children and other family members to this exciting business. There is nothing particularly difficult in making a house, and I will try to reveal all the secrets and possible pitfalls of this process so that you can easily create your own unique and inimitable culinary and architectural masterpiece. Gingerbread house, prepared with your own hands, can serve as a wonderful element New Year's decor your apartment, as well as go to a school exhibition or a charity Christmas market. At the end of the holidays, you can even arrange a ritual eating of the house, although personally I would not risk encroaching on my own work of art. But just in case, I advise you not to store it for more than two weeks before eating.
Be sure to try making a gingerbread house at home with family and friends. This is a great holiday pastime that will help you and your children develop your imagination and creativity, and in addition, it may well become your new family New Year's tradition!
How to make a gingerbread house with your own hands:, and,
INGREDIENTS:
- 420 g flour
- 150 g honey
- 80 g sugar
- 1 pack vanilla sugar
- 90 g butter
- 2 small eggs
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ground spices: 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ginger, 1/2 tsp cardamom, a pinch of cloves, a pinch of nutmeg
Glaze #1:
- 1 egg white
- 100 g powdered sugar
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Glaze #2:
- 1 egg white
- 200 g powdered sugar
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Decorations:
- colored sprinkles
- colorful dragees
- coconut flakes
COOKING METHOD:
1. In order to make a gingerbread house with your own hands on New Year, first knead for him a tasty and fragrant gingerbread dough. To do this, put sugar, honey, vanilla sugar and diced butter in a small saucepan.
2. Heat the honey mixture over low heat, stirring occasionally, until all the ingredients are combined into a thick homogeneous mass. Do not bring the mixture to a boil, as honey will lose its beneficial properties. 
3. Cool the mixture for 10-15 minutes until slightly warm, then add eggs and ground spices to it and mix thoroughly. 
4. Pour the honey mixture into a deep bowl for kneading the dough and gradually, in 2-3 doses, pour the flour sifted with baking powder into it. 
5. Thoroughly knead the dough until smooth with your hands or in a food processor using the “hook” attachment. The gingerbread dough should be tight, not sticky at all, and easily come together in a ball. 
6. Gather the dough into a ball, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or even overnight.
For ease of rolling, I divided the gingerbread dough into 2 parts and gave them the shape of flat rectangles. But you can store the dough in the form of one large ball. If the dough has lain in the refrigerator for several hours, it is better to take it out 20 to 30 minutes before working with it in order to simplify the rolling procedure.
Gingerbread house template
7. In the meantime, you need to cut out templates for the gingerbread house from thick cardboard. You can cut windows and a door into them in advance, but I did it on an already rolled out dough “by eye”. In addition, windows can not even be cut out at all, but painted on the walls of the house with protein glaze.
8. Roll out half of the gingerbread dough on a floured surface into a layer about 5 mm thick.
Important! When rolling out, keep in mind that the dough will expand slightly during baking. It should not be too thin, otherwise the structure of the house will be fragile, but too thick walls will be difficult to fix together.
9. Attach cardboard templates to the dough and cut out the details of the house. Transfer them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and dust lightly with flour. 
10. Bake in an oven preheated to 180 ° C on the lower level for 10 - 12 minutes. The dough for the gingerbread house should not be browned, as soon as it begins to golden around the edges, it must be removed from the oven. 
11. Also roll out the remaining dough, cut it out and bake the base for a free-form house and other details to decorate the entire installation that your imagination tells you - a chimney, a bench, Christmas trees, etc. You can make gingerbread cookies from the rest of the dough, bake and eat them without leaving the cash register 🙂 
12. While the details of the house are cooling, you should prepare protein glaze No. 1 to decorate the house. To do this, beat the chilled egg white at high speeds of the mixer into foam, gradually adding powdered sugar. 
13. Beat the mixture vigorously for 2-3 minutes and add lemon juice at the very end. You should get a thick, but fluid protein glaze. 
Decorating and assembling a gingerbread house
14. Pour the icing into a pastry bag with a thin nozzle and decorate the house with it at your discretion. You can circle the windows, the door, draw the tiles on the roof, etc. 
15. Until the icing is dry, you can stick various decorations on it - colored confectionery sprinkles, multi-colored M&M's dragees, and also sprinkle parts with coconut flakes that imitate snow. After that, it is necessary to allow the glaze to dry completely for several hours, otherwise it may smear or leak when installing the house parts. 
16. To fasten the parts and install the house, you should prepare protein glaze No. 2 with an increased amount of powdered sugar. It turns out thicker and stickier and dries faster, allowing you to better fix all the joints.
The first step is to install two adjacent walls of the house on a base baked from dough, or some other surface (plate, tray). Protein glaze should be applied with a pastry bag to those surfaces that are fastened to each other, as well as to the base for the house. Having installed the walls, you can hold them with your hands for some time until the glaze hardens, or support them on all sides with objects that are suitable in size. In addition, to make the walls stand more even and perpendicular to each other, you can insert a rectangular object inside the house.
Advice! If you see that the joints of the parts of the house do not fit together very well, for example, due to their deformation during the baking process, then you can lightly file them with a knife for a more precise and comfortable fit to each other.
17. Next, you must immediately install the other two walls of the house and wait for them to be firmly fixed for about an hour. So that the protein glaze left for the roof does not dry out during this time, cover the bowl with it with a damp towel. 
18. At the last stage of assembling the house, you need to attach two parts of the roof in turn, generously smearing the joints with protein glaze.
Advice! In the process of assembling a gingerbread house, some problems may arise, for example, glaze flowing where it should not, or, conversely, a lack of glaze in some places. Spilled glaze can be easily corrected or removed with a cotton swab, and also applied with a brush to cracks or other necessary places.
After the house is fully assembled, you can additionally decorate it or correct the imperfections with the remaining protein glaze. In addition, you can decorate the base for the house with icing and sprinkles, as well as glue and attach the remaining parts - a chimney, an entrance door, a bench, etc. Here, the scope for your imagination is practically unlimited.
A cozy and elegant gingerbread house, made with the help of relatives and friends, will create a New Year's mood and become the best decoration home for the upcoming holidays! 