welcome to how to cook that i'm ann reardonand it's that time of year again when we makea gingerbread house. this one has lights and candy inside and plentyof chocolate covering the roof. for the gingerbread itself, you'll need sugar,milk, ground ginger, cloves, cinnamon, glucose syrup, molasses, bicarb, flour and butter. add the glucose syrup to the butter and youcan swap that for light corn syrup if you can't get glucose syrup. and i'll put all of the recipe quantitieson my howtocookthat.net website for you and i'll link to that below.
pour in the molasses and i am doubling thisrecipe because i want to make two houses but you can just make the normal quantity if you'reonly making one. and then add the sugar. mix that all together. now if you don't have a stand mixer don'tworry you can do this with a spoon and to make it easier for you with this recipe youcan actually just warm up the mixture in the microwave so the butter melts and all of thesyrups soften and it makes it really easy to mix up. now i'm going to split mine into two becausethe bowl is so full - if you're not doubling
yours you can skip that step. and then add in the milk and mix that through. then swap to a dough hook and add in abouthalf of your flour. and that's going to still get very full becausewe are making a big gingerbread house. so what i want you to do is put the rest ofthe flour on your counter and tip the gingerbread mixture onto the top. then use your hands to mix all the rest ofthe flour into the dough. and now yes this is going to be very stickyand soft but you don't add more flour, just mix what you have in and then wrap it in plasticwrap and refrigerate for a few hours.
now it will be firmer and you can roll itout using a little flour on your rolling pin and some baking paper underneath. and then put your template pieces over thetop and use a pizza cutter to cut along the straight edges. use a knife to cut out the windows and fiddlybits but leave them in place. take off some of the excess gingerbread butleave a border of spare gingerbread all the way around all of your pieces. this just stops the corners especially thepointy ones and the edges of the house from getting over-cooked in the oven.
then peel off the template before you putit in the oven, i sometimes forget that. then for the little front part roll your gingerbreadquite thinly so it is easier to put together and then follow the same steps as we did forthe other pieces. and you can get the template for this houseand lots of other gingerbread houses on the howtocookthat website and again i'll linkto that below. after baking for 15 minutes take your trayout of the oven and recut the lines and remove any windows. then put it back in the oven for another 10-15minutes to dry out. exactly how long it will take will dependon how thick you've rolled your gingerbread.
with the rest of my dough i'm going to cutout stars to make a christmas tree, you can get creative and make fences, a little shed,a dog kennel or garden beds, anything your heart desires. for the icing we are going to need icing sugar,pavaolva magic mix or powdered egg white and water. just mix all those together until you geta smooth paste. split it into bowls and add the colours ofyour choice. i am making some grey first for outlines. to do different patterns in sections on myhouse i'm just going to use a ruler and mark
off straight lines across. i'm not trying to cut through the gingerbread,i'm just trying to leave a line so i've got a guide. then take your grey icing and pipe along theline and remember to go around the edge on both the front and back panels of the housebecause you will be able to see those edges. we also want to draw a line around the edgeof each piece so it gives a border so when we will it with colour it doesn't just runoff the sides. now draw a double outline around each of yourwindows and an extra bit at the bottom so it looks like a window sill.
what you do from there is really up to you,it's your house. i am going to put patterns in this middlesection and swirls and shapes just to fill that all in. and then for the bottom to contrast that free-formbit in the middle, i'm going to do straight lines, cut that into little squares and thencut those into triangles. and then you can colour that in. now to colour in the pattern what we needto do is add a teaspoon of water to some of your icing and mix it through. this is just going to thin it down.
now you want to thin it until it flows likethis, like thick honey. if it's too thin it will just soak into thegingerbread, if it's too thick it's going to be too hard to work with. for small areas you should be able to dipa skewer into your red icing , put some on and spread it into the corners. do the same with the next colour. and this is really just like colouring inbut using icing. i am going to do the swirls in the same colourso that it ties the two parts of the house together.
once you've coloured in all your swirls thenadd a bit of green to that colour for in between those swirls and fill that in all the gaps. for bigger spaces you can use a pipette ora syringe or even a teaspoon to add icing into place and then just spread it out withyour skewer. to decorate a house neatly like this takesa bit of time, we are going to use this particular one at a picnic with friends tomorrow. the other house that i made the pieces for,that one is going to look completely different - that is our family gingerbread house - wehave a tradition every year of making a gingerbread house together and everyone gets to decorateone side however they like - so it looks a
bit crazy, it looks fun, a little bit messy. and we eat it for dessert on christmas day. let me know in the comments if you guys haveany christmas traditions that you like to do every year? i think this house is looking busy enoughso i'm going to make the top section just plain blue, you can spoon that in and againjust use the skewer to spread it into the corners all the way to the edges. for the window frames add in some brown icing,and now when you make this colour only thin down about 1/4 of it.
leave 3/4 of it thick in another bowl - we'lluse once this first layer is dry. for the little front pieces i am outliningthem in grey too, all the way around the edge and around the windows. then filling them with plain cream colour. once your brown is dry pipe over the thickbrown icing over the top in whatever pattern you like. now you can make really precise window framesusing fondant. i'll link you to my other gingerbread housevideos at the end so you can get some other ideas of how to do them.
last christmas pastry chef mike made a giantversion of one of my gingerbread houses for a meet and greet we had at a department store. it was pretty amazing seeing one of my gingerbreadhouses blown up big and even more fun meeting you guys, i love meeting subscribers faceto face. to assemble the walls of the house i am goingto use compound chocolate because it sets quicker than royal icing so it's a bit fasterto put it together. pipe along the base of two walls and up oneside of the back. then position those two bits into place. add more chocolate on the other side and addyour next wall to that edge.
now pipe along the outside edge of the sidewalls and across the base and put the front of the house into place. for the windows i am using gelatin sheets,these are technically edible, but they don't taste great so i'd suggest not actually eatingthem. i've got other alternatives for windows inthe other gingerbread house videos as well. take the centre support piece and put chocolatealong one side. down on the bottom inside the house and upthe other side. and put that into place - and this piece willhelp hold the roof on when we put that on in a minute, you'll see how that works.
now for that little front section, use morechocolate to glue that into place. once all that chocolate is completely setif you want to add a light just loosen the house from the base and add the light intoplace threading it under and in. now make sure you are using a globe that doesn'tget hot or you might burn your whole house down not just your gingerbread house. use chocolate to secure the house back intoplace onto thee board. and then before the roof goes on, add lotsof candy to the inside of the house - i had a little helper who was very excited to helpme do this. then add chocolate along the joins of theroof and add your roof pieces into place,
you are going to need to hold them there fora moment until you can feel that the chcoolate is starting to set and they're going to beable to hold there. and then you can pipe more chocolate alongthe joins and it's important to make sure that there's no light that comes out anywherefrom the house except for the windows - you don't want it coming through cracks in theroof. add the little roof bits into place at thefront too. and that roof is looking a bit plain so let'sadd some freckles - that's what we call these chocolates here in australia, let me knowif you have a different name for it in other countries.
add them in rows like roof tiles all overthe roof. then add jelly beans along the top edge. add some chocolate to the roof of the entry. and if you scrape down using a serrated knifeas it sets you'll get a nice pattern on this little roof. for your tree you just need to stack up yourstars, i like to use two of each size so the tree ends up a bit taller. then add jelly beans to the sides to makeit colourful and pretty. cover the base with melted white chocolate.
and if you don't want the ground to be flatyou can always just add some marshmallows or candy and drizzle them with chocolate soyou have a little bit of uneven ground there. add your tree into place on one side and usea tree strainer to shake some icing sugar to make it snowy. if you make a gingerbread house this yearyou can post a photo of it in the comments section on the website so i can see it. subscribe to howtocookthat for more crazysweet creations, click here for the recipe, here for more gingerbread houses and christmasideas and here for the latest video. make it a great week and i'll see you friday.