Gingerbread House

Great British Baking Show: “The Beginnings” (Netflix), Season 5 (PBS)                                                   –A.K.A. The Great British Bake Off Series 3

Episode 8:                                                                                                                                                         Showstopper Challenge– Gingerbread Structure

 

I will be cheating a bit with this post because I do not feel like making gingerbread in the middle of the summer, so I’m posting the lovely little gingerbread house I made for last Christmas. It was my first time making gingerbread from scratch and constructing a house with it and boy was it a lot of work! But it was very fun to decorate, and I let my brother help me out with it.

I don’t have too many pictures of actually making it, but I have the end result as well as what it looks like halve destroyed because  you shouldn’t just stare a gingerbread house, you should eat it! My brother and I had fun with the decorating. We put a little gingerbread Peep man inside looking out the window as well as one on the porch and we stacked up Pirouette logs next to the stoop by the front door. I rather like the way it came out! The little puff of white on the top is supposed to be smoke coming out of the chimney.

This gingerbread house, though small and simple was practically an all day endeavor for me so I seriously sympathize with the bakers making all those ridiculous show stopper gingerbread structures. A lot of the bakers used caramel instead of royal icing to glue their gingerbread pieces together which is a lot stronger and I think it dried quicker as well. I stuck to the traditional for my cute little Christmas gingerbread house.

See that little head through the window!

I started with planning my structure in the morning, making stencils to cut it and figuring out how much gingerbread I would need. The recipe I used yielded about one cookie sheet worth of dough. Making the dough is simple enough, just combine all the ingredients in the stand mixer until the dough is formed and knead it a bit on the counter to get it smooth. Then using a pre-cut sheet of parchment paper measured to the size of my cookie sheet, I rolled the dough out into a rectangle on the parchment.

The real trick with making gingerbread is cutting as many pieces as possible out of the single sheet of dough to prevent wasting it. You can’t just cut out the pieces you need and cook them separated on the sheet and keep the extra. That is a big no no with construction gingerbread because then the gingerbread will expand and it won’t be the size you need. If anything you have to leave a border of dough around the pre-cut pieces so they won’t expand. Bigger gaps in the cookie sheet can be taken off and rolled out again for another batch. So after rolling out the dough on the cookie sheet, with a sharp knife, cut the pieces you need but leave the dough around it. Right after the dough came out of the oven, I re-cut the lines on my pieces and they separated easily.

 While the gingerbread was cooling, I made my royal icing over the double boiler. Royal icing contains egg whites and while some people say it’s fine without cooking it, I like this recipe because it heats the icing enough so there’s absolutely no need to worry about raw egg. So first I combined my ingredients except for the extra powdered sugar and beat together. Then I put it over my double boiler and stirred until it was hot to the touch. I then took it off the heat, and added the last of the powdered sugar and beat it for a bit to cool it down.

After that, both my icing and gingerbread were ready for construction. My brother helped me hold walls in place while I piped royal icing into the cracks to stick it all together. Having another set of hands was also a major help with this. I again sympathize with the bakers for their tremendous feat doing the construction mostly themselves. Before the roof went on, I glued in my window panes and put our little gingerbread man inside the house. 

I made the windowpanes, stoop railing, walking stones, and little decoration above the door by thinning down some leftover gingerbread dough with water and piping it onto my cookie sheet and then baking it. These pieces weren’t so much for the taste as they were for the looks. It’s really easy to pipe it into the shapes you want when the dough is thinned down. I feel like these pieces gave my house that little extra touch of realness to it. 

After the house was constructed, we moved on to decorating the outside with candy and extra icing! I had some gingerbread trees and men that we icing-glued onto the sides of the house that didn’t have windows. We had Justin’s peanut butter cups and gummy stars from Whole Foods which we used to construct into a little tree next to the front door. We also had peanut butter M&M’s to decorate the roof and sides of the house with. We put some gummy stars on the house as well. We put one more Peep gingerbread man on the front stoop and sprinkled the house with powdered sugar to make it look like it snowed. It was a fun time! And below is what the house looked like after it was half eaten…haha!

Gingerbread House

 Adapted from Serious Eats: Gingerbread & Icing.

Ingredients:

Gingerbread

• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 1/3 c. corn syrup
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 c. flour

Royal Icing

• 4 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 2 egg whites
• 2 tsp. water
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

Directions:

1. Plan the structure for your gingerbread. I used a simple 4 walls and roof design that I found googling pictures. I then used pieces of paper I cut out as stencils to cut out the gingerbread. Make sure those are all ready.
2. Start with the gingerbread dough. Trim a piece of parchment paper to fit a half-sheet pan. Preheat oven to 350°F. In a stand mixer, combine brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, salt, corn syrup, butter, and vanilla and mix until smooth. Then slowly add the flour until dough is combined to form a stiff dough. Roll out on top of pre-cut parchment paper and then use your stencil to cut the pieces you need into the dough. Leave dough around each piece to prevent it from expanding while cooking. Bake for about 25 minutes. 
3. Immediately upon taking gingerbread out of oven, cut along the pre-scored lines with a sharp knife, then let cool completely on pan. Any left over uncooked dough can be beaten with some water to form a paste to create cool shapes with your dough, like railing or windowpanes.
4. While the gingerbread is cooling, start the royal icing. In a large bowl that can be fitted into a double boiler, add 4 cups of powdered sugar, egg whites, water, vanilla, salt, and cream of tartar. Whisk together, then set over double boiler and continue to mix about 10 minutes until the icing is hot to the touch or about 150°F. Then take off heat and beat in remaining 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and continue for about a minute to cool down icing. Then transfer to a piping bag.
5. Assemble your gingerbread structure by piping a generous amount of royal icing onto the sides of the walls. Decorate with remainder of icing and candy of your choosing. Enjoy looking at it, then eat it!