Gingerbread houses: Christmas recipes

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Before the New Year and Christmas, the question always arises 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. 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 do you need for the test?

So, to prepare a gingerbread house, we should get the following products:

1. Sugar - 0.5 cups.
2. Butter - one pack (200-260 g).
3. Honey - 90 grams.
4. Ginger - 1.5-2 teaspoons. You can take it dry. It is sold in every supermarket.
5. Flour - 0.75 kilograms.
6. Soda - 1.3 tsp
7. Lemon juice– 1 teaspoon.
8. Clove - 1.6 tsp
9. 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, eggs. All this is thoroughly mixed on fire.

Then you need to add some soda. The mixture will definitely foam up. But you mix it well anyway.

Then we introduce 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.

Blankets 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 will be future paper patterns, you decide. It all depends on how smallor your gingerbread house will be big.

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.

Cut out the details from the 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. In the meantime…

Baking 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.

Cooking glaze

So, we already have the finished 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 be possible to collect everything and decorate in one day.

The protein of one chilled egg should be beaten withhalf a glass of powdered sugar. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice (necessarily freshly squeezed). Put the resulting glaze into a pastry bag. We take the nozzle with the smallest slot and use it to trace the contours of all windows, walls and doors. 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.

Starting to assemble the 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. Or you can carefully fasten the corners with them, then covering it all with icing.

New roof icing

The next day you need to beat a new batch of 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 untilshe 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 a finished 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 will be well smeared with glaze. Here are our gingerbread houses and ready.

Next, 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 claims to decorate the festive table. In general, Christmas recipes are such a miracle! They cheer you up already at the stage of reading, let alone the finished treat!

Instead of afterword

What is good about these recipes is that you can involve children 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, are not just cookies, but handmade! And what a!

This composition will be 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! Moreover, you can bring something of your own to the above recipe, andyour gingerbread houses will be like no other. 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!