A House that Looks Good Enough to Eat

Not my house. C'mon, you know that's not true. Decorating skillz, I lack.

I'll be making my gingerbread house next week.

It's one of those traditions that I sort of dread, but the reality is always better than I expect it to be. I just hope I don't have to sit here and make it all by myself. That would be depressing.

Here is the recipe for gingerbread, in case anyone who doesn't already have it is interested:

Gingerbread Recipe:

2 3/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ginger powder

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves

3 tsp baking powder

2/3 cup molasses

3 egg yolks (save the whites for the icing)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

line two large size cookie sheets with foil and spray with cooking spray. set aside

mix all ingredients together to form a dough. divide dough in half. press each half into a cookie sheet. (it helps to coat your hands with crisco so the dough sticks less to them.) bake at 300º for 20 minutes. place pattern pieces on the cookie sheets and use a knife to cut around the pieces as soon as the gingerbread comes out of the oven. pull the negative pieces of the gingerbread (the pieces you are not using for your house) off the cookie sheet and allow the house pieces to cool. Separate the foil from your house pieces before they are completely cool, though, because the foil sticks to the gingerbread like an obsessed ex-boyfriend who can't seem to move on.

Royal Icing

3 egg whites

1 lb of powdered sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tarter

Mix all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Cover portion not being used with a wet towel to keep it from drying out.

I don't have a scanner to scan the pattern for the pieces, but here is a photograph of them, if that helps anyone who is actually going to make one of these beauties.

Side: cut two

roof: cut two

front and back: cut one with all the windows for the front, then use a cookie cutter or freehand a big window on the back piece.

You can't get one of these, he's one of a kind and he's all mine.

That's my mom's handwriting on those pattern pieces. If your little heart is desperate to make a House of Gingerbread, send me your address and I'll mail you a pattern. You could also use pieces of cardboard to make a mock-up of a house and use those for a pattern.

We use hot glue to stick it all together and then we use icing to cover the hot glue. We stick it to a piece of cardboard with a hole big enough to put a nightlight through and covered in tin foil.

Then we do our best to make it look like the candy aisle at Wal-Mart vomited all over it.

Maybe I'll photograph the step by step next week and post more complete instructions.