Gingerbread House!

Hi Lovelies!

Firstly, happy Christmas Eve! I can’t believe how fast it has come around!

Anyway, one thing that I have been wanting to make for ages now is my own Gingerbread House. So yesterday I decided to give it a go! I used a very simple recipe from BBC Good Food. This is a great first recipe to use and it comes complete with printable templates for the roof and walls. After following the basic steps I basically just improvised and decorated it as I wanted. Check out the recipe on the link above if you want to make your own!

To make the Gingerbread you need:

250g unsalted butter
200g dark muscovado sugar
7 tbsp golden syrup
600g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 tsp ground ginger

First mix together the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. In a separate bowl mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger together and then combine the two mixtures together.

Roll the gingerbread mixture out onto baking paper and then cut out the required shapes using the templates.

Stick almond flakes into the roof shapes (make sure you don’t make the same mistake as me though and stick them into the walls!! Ooops)

Bake for 10-12 minutes and then trim the shapes to fit the templates again as they will have grown a little in the oven.

Combine 500g icing sugar and 2 egg whites to make the icing and then use a piping bag to glue the shapes together. This can be quite a tricky process and requires a bit of patience holding the sides together whilst the icing begins to dry.

Once you have assembled the basic shape it is a good idea to leave it for a little bit just so it can dry as much as possible. After that you have free reign to decorate as you please!

As I had put the almond roof tiles on the wrong sides I decided to use chocolate fingers to create a log roof effect. Although it looks great it meant the the roof was too heavy and so I had quite a few problems keeping it supported! (The problems of being creative but not at all scientific!). I placed a chunk of flake ontop to act as a chimney.

With the leftover gingerbread mix I made a little gate and some trees. I used skittles to decorate the trees and to create a path to the house and some flowers.

I love the little pile of logs! I just used some Flake to do this.

In the end I decided to replace the gate with a little pond. I just used silver balls and blue and purple smarties to create a frosted water effect.

I sprinkled the whole thing with icing sugar to make it look as though it had snowed and here is the finished product!

I hope you like it! It was so much fun to make, even though there were a few tricky situations to overcome! I’m not sure how we will go about eating it but then again, it is just cake, biscuit and sweets so I’m sure we will find a way!

Have you ever made a ginger bread house? I’d love to see your links 🙂

I hope everyone has the most amazing Christmas tomorrow!! Enjoy yourself and I hope Santa brings you lots of lovely things 🙂

Lots of love,

Sass x