Gingerbread house: a cake recipe for the New Year and Christmas. Christmas gingerbread house and recipe with photo and product pattern
Making a beautiful, edible, fabulous house with your own hands is not easy enough, because for it you need not only to have culinary skills, but also the talent of a decorator. We will tell you all the secrets of making a gingerbread house.
New Year's gingerbread house: a bit of history
How and who first prepared a delicious and beautiful treat? The answer to this question has been lost among historical vicissitudes. It is known that buildings made of dough were cult even in the times of Ancient Rome and were considered the dwellings of the gods. But after the holidays, they were treated in a completely modern way - they simply ate it with the whole family. As a tasty and beautiful decoration for the New Year, it was first prepared in Germany. Gingerbread houses became popular immediately after the release of an edifying and instructive tale about the adventures of two children - Hansel and Gretel. It was with a sweet house made of gingerbread, marzipan, candied fruit and candy that they were seduced by an evil sorceress, from whom the children still managed to escape.
The gingerbread house is not only fabulously beautiful, but also incredibly practical. Due to its composition, it is able to be stored for a long time, and remain as tasty as on the first day after preparation. Thus, the hostess can bake it for Christmas, and it served as a decoration for the house without any problems until the end of all the New Year holidays.
Shortly after German confectioners began to prepare this unusual dessert every year, it became so popular that it also took root overseas - in America. From now on, every hostess had her own recipe for a delicious decoration, and each believed that she had the best one. In truth, the basic recipe was quite simple - honey, flour, sugar and spices. It was the addition of the latter that was kept in the strictest confidence, because both the taste and the “durability” of the finished gingerbread depended on them.
The gingerbread house also gained fame in Russia - it was considered a sign of prosperity in the house and a guarantee of well-being in the coming year. Gingerbread in those days in our country were very popular and affordable for everyone, but the poor did not make houses from them - there was neither time nor hunting for painting gingerbread, and decorations such as candied fruits, chocolate or marmalade were too expensive.
Be that as it may, a gingerbread house is the best gift for a little boy or girl. Turn the preparation of this delicacy into a family celebration - bake and decorate it with the children. Memories of this will surely sweep through your whole life, and someday your children will cook it according to a proven "grandmother's" recipe along with your grandchildren.
Gingerbread house recipe step by step
How to make a gingerbread house This is a whole science, because it is very important not only to knead the dough correctly, but also to make the icing (a cream with which you can connect all parts of the house).
It is worth starting the preparation of the New Year's treat by kneading the dough. You will not find a single recipe for gingerbread - there are more than a hundred of them in the world and each of them has the right to be called the best. Mandatory ingredients are honey, flour, sugar, butter and spices. The peculiarity of this recipe is the minimum amount of liquid used, which makes the dough quite tight and dense. We will tell you how to cook the dough step by step a little later, and now we will consider another very important and necessary process - preparing a pattern. It is very difficult to cut the details of the house from the already prepared dough, because the dough is honey-sand, which means it easily crumbles under the knife. Because of this, all the details need to be cut out even at the stage of rolling out the dough - so you will be sure that the prepared material will be enough for the “construction”.
You can easily find patterns for a gingerbread house on the Internet - the simplest and most affordable models are presented there. To make such a dessert, you will need two rectangular walls, two facades (one must be made with a carved doorway) and two rectangles for the roof. Their exact dimensions can be found on the World Wide Web or you can draw it yourself. But a one-story house is far from the ultimate dream, because beautiful two-story cottages, mills, and even castles for princesses are made from gingerbread. In general, with the help of gingerbread dough and your own imagination, you can cook a real masterpiece that will be the embodiment of your dreams.
The next step is also important. How to make a protein cream for connecting the house (icing)? It is made from eggs, sugar and lemon juice. Even a novice cook can cook it, so you can shift these pleasant chores to a child (of course, if he is not too small).
Assembling and painting a fabulous house is the most pleasant and exciting moment. It is better to do it with the whole family, because such moments are very close. Arrange small competitions, who will draw the window faster or who will let the roof down better. You can also record a joint master class for relatives and friends.
Gingerbread house dough: the most popular recipe
As mentioned earlier, there are a lot of gingerbread recipes, but we will consider the most popular of them - with honey and cinnamon.
To prepare the dough you will need:
- 125 g of liquid honey (if the honey is candied, it should be melted);
- 100 g of granulated sugar;
- 100 g butter (soft, but not liquid);
- 1 chilled chicken egg;
- 1 st. l sour cream (or half a teaspoon of soda);
- a pinch of salt;
- a pinch of cinnamon;
- a pinch of cardamom
With the same ingredients, you can also prepare ginger dough by adding a teaspoon of dry ground ginger to the batch.
Step by step preparation:
- In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients: flour, sugar, salt and spices;
- Beat the egg with a whisk, add honey and oil to it;
- Mix dry and wet ingredients, knead elastic dough. Properly kneaded dough does not float, although this largely depends on the quality of the selected flour and the amount of gluten in it. If yours turned out to be a little liquid, then add a little more flour and knead well;
- Roll the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling film and put it in the refrigerator so that it “rests” properly. The optimal "rest" time is 2 hours;
- After this time, the workpiece should be pulled out and allowed to move a little warm;
- Divide the dough into several parts and shake thinly;
- Cut out the figures you need for the house. Do not throw away the scraps - they make wonderful gingerbread animals and men;
- The process of baking gingerbread does not last long - 20 minutes at 180 degrees. Make sure that the dough does not burn; if necessary, reduce the temperature to 150 degrees;
- The baked parts of the house should be cooled and only then proceed to assemble the dessert.
This dough recipe is the simplest and its preparation takes a minimum of time. If you want to experiment or discover something new, look no further than the old-fashioned gingerbread dough, which is made with custard and can stay fresh for months. This recipe in Rus' was used by women, sending their husbands on a long journey or on a military campaign.
Gingerbread house frosting recipe
Since ancient times, caramel has been used to glue all the details of a gingerbread house. This viscous substance perfectly connects all the parts, but after hardening it becomes hard like caramel, which it is. That is why, over time, it was replaced by a light protein cream - icing. It is very simple to make it: beat 2 egg whites with 1.5 tbsp. powdered sugar and a teaspoon of lemon juice (add at the end of whipping) and the cream is ready. Next, move the mass into a pastry bag and you can begin to form a house, as well as its subsequent painting.
DIY gingerbread house: recipes without honey
As mentioned earlier, among the many desserts there are those for which honey is not so important. We bring to your attention a recipe for a Christmas gingerbread house without honey. To prepare it you will need:
- 150 g flour;
- 60 g sugar;
- 2 tbsp. l melted butter;
- a quarter teaspoon of soda;
- a pinch of ginger and cinnamon;
- 1 st. l milk.
It is not difficult to knead such a dough - just mix all the ingredients, knead and let it stand under the film for half an hour. Please note that this amount of dough will only be enough for a small house measuring 15 by 20 cm. If you want a more monumental structure, double or triple the weight of the ingredients.
A gingerbread house with or without honey is a fairy tale made by hand. Do not miss the opportunity to cook this wonderful dessert that will not leave any little sweet tooth unattended.
We are already on the nose of the New Year and Christmas holidays. Along with elements of Western culture, the fashion came to us for the New Year holidays not only for Santa, Christmas wreaths, deer, but also for gingerbread houses.
Today for you there are several recipes for gingerbread houses with step by step photos, as well as a video tutorial from Tatyana Litvinova on how to bake and beautifully decorate a festive gingerbread house !!!
Gingerbread house №1
For test:
4 cups flour
salt
1 sachet of baking powder
200 g butter
200 g powdered sugar
5 tablespoons of liquid honey (if the honey is candied, heat it in a water bath)
4 egg yolks
Spices 1 tsp each:
ground ginger,
cinnamon (this is to taste, because not everyone likes cinnamon),
zest of 1 lemon,
cardamom,
anise
Cooking method:
1. Knead the dough, wrap in cling film and put in the refrigerator for several hours.
This dough is very tasty, fragrant, but you need to work with it very carefully.
2. To build our house, you need to cut out templates. The wall is 15 cm wide and 17 cm high.
3. From each such template, we need to cut out two parts from the dough - these will be two of the four sides of our house.
4. And one more template for the two remaining sides of our house.
The length of the template is 17cm and the width is 7cm.
5. Roof template 22 cm long and 14.5 cm wide.
6. On a sheet of parchment, roll out the dough into a layer 5-6 mm thick. If rolled thinner, the gingerbread will be too dry.
We apply ready-made templates and cut along the contour.
We remove the trimmings and shift the cut parts along with the parchment onto a baking sheet.
7. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven at 180oC for 20 minutes.
8. After baking, while the dough is still hot, cut out the details of doors and windows according to the same patterns cut out of paper.
9. Cut while pastries are hot. Cut the cut out window in half lengthwise. These are future shutters. Cool all parts on a wire rack.
10. Now we cut out the windows in the side walls of the house.
11. From the remaining dough, cut out the roof of the house, Christmas trees, a pipe, small coasters for Christmas trees, any interesting details and figures.
12. This is what the windows look like from the inside. We fasten the marmalade to the cut-out windows on the icing of powdered sugar and protein.
13. Making white icing or icing:
It simultaneously replaces paint for drawing on the house and glue for gluing parts together.
Section "TABLE SETTING, DECORATION OF DISHES, ETIQUETTE"
The section helps to decorate a variety of dishes with minimal effort.
Chapter
3rd page of the chapter
gingerbread house
DIY gingerbread houses, step by step photos
Part 3
BUILD A gingerbread house, castle or palace
Recipes with step by step photos
And:
Cookie and waffle houses
gingerbread trees
Painted Christmas gingerbread and gingerbread valentines
If the rolling pin is wooden, soak it several times at intervals of 1-2 hours with a generous amount of sunflower oil(it will be absorbed into the wood), then let it "dry out" for 5-7 days (sunflower oil polymerizes, hardens in air, unlike olive oil).
After impregnation and drying, a wooden rolling pin (or a wooden cutting board) will become "eternal", non-hygroscopic and easy to clean.
A very useful technique when rolling out dough:
The process of making gingerbread houses is of the same type and necessarily includes rolling out the gingerbread dough into a layer of the required thickness for subsequent cutting out of it.
When rolling out the dough with a rolling pin into a layer, it is convenient to use the slats of the desired thickness laid on the sides, as shown in the photo.
This allows you to make the layer perfectly even in thickness and with straight side edges (which significantly reduces the number of trimmings when cutting the house).
Details of gingerbread structures are glued together:
- or white or dark chocolate heated in a water bath (this is the most convenient to use, strong enough and quickly hardening connection),
- or thickly boiled (caramel) hot sugar syrup or sugar fondant (see) with the addition of citric acid (a drop of such syrup hardens on a saucer; citric acid prevents sugar crystallization and is added until a pleasant sweet and sour taste of syrup is obtained),
- or - sugar-protein drawing mass.
It is convenient to use glass jars of suitable sizes, partially filled with water for their stability, as supports that hold the parts in the desired position when the gluing solidifies.
Various patterns are drawn in white and tinted in different colors and imitations of snow are made.
For drawing and snow, you can also use the confectionery.
Snow sprinkles are represented by powdered sugar (it is carefully sprinkled through a strainer) or coconut flakes, or a mixture of them.
Decorative multi-colored figurines for decorating compositions with houses can be sculpted from densely diluted, from and from.
Windows of gingerbread houses:
- or before assembly, draw on baked parts,
- or make in the form of open slots, decorated along the edges or; they do this more often if they fill the house with sweets, which are beautifully visible through the cut openings;
- or from the inside, close the slots of the windows with thin slices of marmalade, gluing them:
- or make candy windows (stained glass windows): for this, the finished baked parts with cut windows are placed face up on a lightly oiled foil, the windows are covered with crushed candy and placed for 1-2 minutes in the oven, heated to 220-250 gr. C, where candy crumbs are fused into a thin monolithic layer.
The process of fusing candy crumbs in the oven is very short, and it must be monitored visually in order to remove the parts from the oven in time. Because shortly after the melting of the candy, they will begin to burn out rather quickly into a bitter brown sugar burnt, which should be excluded.
By filling different parts of the window with candies of different colors, you can get beautiful multi-colored stained-glass windows that will look especially impressive when illuminated from the inside.
Lollipop windows are also decorated with "stained glass" shortcrust pastry cookies or "stained glass" gingerbread.
See the end of this page for stained glass cookies.
Assembling a gingerbread house from parts with figured candy windows.
In this case, the parts are glued
smoke from the chimney often depicted as cotton candy.
It is recommended to develop the design and drawings of your gingerbread house (castle, palace) on your own.
If you are not very good at architectural drawing, glue the made cardboard (or thick paper) patterns into a whole product and make sure that all the parts fit well together. Then separate the patterns and use for cutting gingerbread parts.
On this page we will look at several examples of building different gingerbread houses. We recommend reading them all.
Mastering the techniques used in their manufacture will allow you to build any house or a whole gingerbread palace to your liking.
USEFUL VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS:
Training gingerbread house
for beginner gingerbread house builders
- simple and beautiful
In its manufacture, all the main stages of gingerbread housing construction are shown.
We recommend that all work, from design, be carried out with children.
1. Designing a house and creating template drawings.
Let's draw on paper and cut out patterns (templates) of the details of the future gingerbread house:
2. Then we start preparing the dough.
Those who have never made gingerbread dough products should first bake homemade gingerbread cookies from it several times to gain experience, and only then make gingerbread house details from gingerbread dough.
Therefore, in this case, we will use not, but a suitable one with a baking powder.
See also recipes on page .
NOTE 1.
Without any experience, you can easily and simply use the ancient dough recipe for (perhaps this is the best dough for gingerbread). If desired, the following spices can be added to it, as well as dry berries ground into powder.
NOTE 2
In this recipe, liquid honey is needed to prepare the dough. If the honey is candied, i.e. crystallized (good honey candied no later than October 20 - see), it must first be melted with stirring in a hot water bath.
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On a baking sheet, heat the butter, molasses and honey, mix and cool slightly. |
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Lay the house front template on the pastry sheet and cut out the windows and door, side walls and roof. |
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Whip the egg whites into a strong foam. |
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Using a thin nozzle, also decorate the elements of the roof: draw borders along the ridge, and a grid-like pattern on the slopes of the roof. |
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Whisk the frosting again. |
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In the same way, install the second side and front walls of the house. |
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When the roof slopes are installed, there will most likely be a small gap where they meet. |
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Using a knife, remove excess glaze, which turned out at the junctions of the elements of the house. |
The roof of the house is tiled with cookies, the chimney is lined with halves of peanuts, the shutters are made of waffles, the porch with columns is made of candy.
Next to the house are trees made from waffle cups for ice cream and gingerbread cookies.
WE WILL NEED
CUTTING DETAILS
1. One square = 1 cm.
2. Redraw the pattern in full size in centimeters (more convenient on checkered paper).
3. All parts are made in 2 pieces, the pipe - 3 pieces.
4. Parts "1" belong to the first big house, parts "2" belong to the second small house.
5. The walls are baked from ginger dough.
6. The roof is baked from white dough.
7. One end of a large house is baked half from white, half from ginger dough (see).
The second end of a large house is baked from gingerbread dough.
The ends of a small house are baked only from gingerbread dough.
8. The chimney is baked from white dough.
WHITE DOUGH
For this recipe, knead the dough once.
180-200 g butter
2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking soda quenched with vinegar
1 egg
3 cups wheat flour
1. In a large bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer for 30 seconds or until fluffy.
2. Add soda and sugar, beat until completely combined.
3. Add the egg and beat until completely combined.
4. Add flour and quickly knead the dough.
5. Cover the dough and refrigerate for approximately 2 hours.
6. After cooling, divide the dough in half (it is more convenient to roll out) and roll out with a rolling pin into a layer 5-6 mm thick. To prevent the dough from sticking to the table (to the board), be sure to sprinkle the table with flour.
7. Place a paper pattern of the corresponding part of the house on the rolled out layer and cut out the part from the dough along the contours.
8. Carefully transfer the part to a baking sheet (you can cover the baking sheet with foil). Put the paper pattern back on the part and, if the edges of the part are deformed during transfer, correct it.
9. Bake at t° 150 - 170°C for 5-7 minutes. When the part is slightly browned, it is ready.
10. Quickly remove the part from the oven, transfer it to the board and, after laying a pattern on it, align the edges (since there is soda in the dough, the dough moves a little when baking).
11. Cool the part.
12. Do the same with all the details that are baked from white dough. From the rest of the dough, it is necessary to form and bake small cookies - "pebbles", from which a "stone fence" will then be made near the house.
13. SPECIAL DETAILS - THE END OF THE BIG HOUSE
(white roof and ginger butt wall baked together):
13.1. Make a paper pattern of the end of a large house in two copies.
13.2. Cut one copy of the pattern along the dotted line of the roof and cut this part - the roof - from white dough (do not bake yet!).
13.3. Cut the lower part of the part - the wall of the end of the house from ginger dough (on the paper pattern, the part ends with a solid line located just above the dotted line, parallel to it).
13.4. Lay the gingerbread dough on top of the white along the border, as on a paper pattern. Lubricate the place of application with a little water for gluing and gently press.
13.5. Cut strips from the gingerbread dough (according to the size of the pattern) and glue it onto the white dough roof with water.
13.6. Carefully transfer the part to a baking sheet (can be covered with foil). Put a whole paper pattern on the part and correct the edges that were deformed when the part was transferred.
13.7. Bake at t ° 150-170 ° C, 5-7 minutes. When the part is slightly browned, it is ready.
13.8. Quickly remove the part from the oven, transfer it to the board and, after laying its whole pattern on it, align the edges.
13.9. Cool the item.
GINGER DOUGH
According to this recipe, knead the dough twice, each batch separately.
80-100 g butter
one and a half cups of sugar
one and a half teaspoons of ginger
one and a half teaspoons of cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda quenched with vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 cups honey
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups wheat flour
1 cup bran or 3 cups wheat flour
1. In a large bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer for 30 seconds until fluffy. Add sugar, ginger, cloves, quenched soda and salt, beat until completely combined.
2. Add egg, molasses and lemon juice, beat until completely combined.
3. Add flour and knead the dough.
4. Wrap the dough in polyethylene and keep in a cold place for 3 hours.
Christmas trees
Christmas trees we will have waffle cones for ice cream. If there are no cones, then we will make Christmas trees ourselves - we will bake them from white dough.
1. Cut out circles of different diameters from the rolled out dough - from the largest (bottom of the Christmas tree) to the smallest (top). We make cloves at the edges of each circle with a knife. Thus we get jagged circles.
2. We bake the circles and fold them in a pyramid from a larger circle to a smaller one, smearing with icing. To make the Christmas tree taller, round small cookies, also baked from white dough, can be laid between large parts.
3. In the same way, we collect a few more Christmas trees.
4. We decorate the finished Christmas trees: we place the icing, tinted green, in a bag and squeeze it out, circling the jagged edges; sprinkle the Christmas trees with multi-colored sprinkles, powder the top of the strainer with powdered sugar - "snowball".
FOUNDATION OF THE HOUSE
Bake a large cake base on which it will be convenient to assemble the house. The base area should be larger than the area of \u200b\u200bthe house (you can bake the base in parts and glue it with glaze).
GLAZE
Glaze is used immediately, so do it after the parts of the house are ready for assembly. Don't double the recipe right away; make a second batch of frosting only when needed.
3 egg whites
750 grams sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
food colorings
1. In a deep bowl, beat the egg white, add sugar, vanilla.
2. Beat with an electric mixer on high speed for 7-10 minutes or until very stiff. Glaze should not be runny. To prevent the icing from drying out, cover the bowl with it with a damp towel.
3. Glaze for gluing parts is conveniently applied using a bag (2 bags are obtained from the A4 file). Fold the bag and fasten with a stapler along the entire length so that it does not unwind. Fill the bag with icing and, wrapping the top, fasten it with a stapler (so that the icing does not come out). So that the icing does not leak out of the holes from the stapler brackets and does not stain your hands, the bag filled with icing must be wrapped with sticky thin plastic wrap, twisting it at the top. Straight or obliquely cut off the sharp corner of the bag, just a little bit.
4. If the glaze does not adhere well to the part, moisten the glued areas with water using a brush. Glaze can be applied to both gluing points.
5. Glaze of a different color (for finishing windows, Christmas trees), paint with dry dye.
The more precisely you make the parts of the house, the easier it will be to fit them together.
DECORATION
Baked and cooled parts can be decorated before assembly, carefully checking that the level of the windows is the same height on all the details of the walls. And you can decorate after assembly.
If you are decorating before assembly, you must be VERY CAREFUL during assembly so as not to damage the painted windows and decorations.
1. WALLS
2. PORCH
Cut another square cookie across into two identical rectangles and glue them to the first triangle in the form of the letter " /\ " ().
ASSEMBLY
COMBINE ALL THE PARTS WITHOUT GLUEING THEM AND TRIM, ADJUST IF SOMETHING DOESN'T MATCH (WHILE NOTHING IS LUBRICATED WITH CREAM OR GLAZE, IT IS MORE CONVENIENT TO DO).
House.
Prepare the "foundation of the house". Align the parts as shown in the picture. Glue the parts to the base of the house and glue them together with glaze. Wait until all joints are firmly fixed. For reliability, as the house is assembled, the joints of the walls can be additionally coated with glaze from the inside of the house.
Roof.
When the ends and walls are securely dry, you can glue the details of the roof. Hold them until the frosting dries.
Chimney.
Glue together the three parts of the chimney and glue them to the end of the small house. Brush with icing and top with toasted and peeled peanut halves.
Roof tiles.
Spread the icing evenly on the surface of the roof and arrange the cookie pads in a checkerboard pattern. The icing should be thick, otherwise the pads will crawl down, they will have to be held for a long time. Liquid glaze can be mixed again with powdered sugar. Mask the uneven edges of the "tiled roof" by edging with glaze. From the top of the strainer, powder the roof with powdered sugar - "snowball".
FINAL STROKE
Icicles.
Using a bag of icing, make an imitation of icing: touch the tip to the edge of the roof, gently squeezing the bag - the icing will drain, forming an icicle. Repeat along all edges of the roof and along the canopy above the front door.
Yard.
By gluing the "pebbles" with glaze, make a "fence". Install Christmas trees in the yard. You can make "drifts" - "pebbles" grease with icing and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Fantasize!
What should eventually happen - see the title. Design options:
:
For test:
- honey - 1 glass,
- wheat flour - 2-2.5 cups,
- rye flour - 1 cup,
- egg yolks - 2 pcs.,
- butter - 50 g,
- soda - 0.5 tsp,
- ground cinnamon - 1 teaspoon,
- ground ginger - 1 teaspoon,
- ground cardamom - 1/4 teaspoon,
Glaze for gluing:
- egg white - 1 pc.,
- powdered sugar - 1 cup,
- lemon juice - 8-10 drops.
1. Heat honey and oil over low heat until liquid.
2. Mix a glass of wheat flour with ginger and cinnamon, pour into the honey-oil mixture, mix thoroughly so that there are no lumps. Cool slightly.
3. Mix rye flour with the remaining wheat flour and soda. Whip the egg yolks. Pour the yolks into the honey mixture that has cooled to a warm state, grind, then pour in the flour.
4. Quickly knead the dough. The dough should be non-sticky, plastic, dense. Divide the dough into 2-3 parts.
5. Roll out the dough on a floured table to a thickness of 0.5-0.7 cm, cut out according to the pattern of the blank for the gingerbread house. Transfer the blanks to a baking sheet, spread out at a distance of at least 2 cm from each other.
6. Bake gingerbread blanks at a temperature of +220°C for about 8 minutes; take care not to burn.
7. Cool the baked parts of the gingerbread house. They can be stored until the house is assembled for several days in a closed cardboard box at room temperature.
Assembly and decoration of the house.
8. Caramel windows. Place the pieces with windows on a baking sheet lined with foil. Grind hard candy caramel in a coffee grinder and pour into the windows flush with the thickness of the parts. Place the baking sheet in the preheated oven for 2-4 minutes to melt the caramel. Remove from oven, cool until caramel hardens, remove foil.
9. Glaze for gluing. Beat the egg white until it doubles in volume. When whipping the protein, gradually pour in powdered sugar in small portions, and then add lemon juice. The icing is ground until white and fluffy. If desired, the glaze is tinted in the desired color with cocoa powder, burnt sugar, beetroot or cranberry juice, turmeric, food coloring. Prepare the glaze in small portions, as it quickly hardens. If a special pastry bag is not available, thin strips of glaze can be applied from a 10-20 ml medical syringe with the needle removed.
10. To decorate a gingerbread house, icing, nuts, multi-colored dragee candies, confectionery sprinkles, coconut flakes, marmalade, chocolate, candied fruits are used. Decoration elements are attached to the gingerbread base with glaze and allowed to dry.
11. On a gingerbread base sheet, the house is assembled. The parts are glued with glaze gradually, pressing them well against each other and fixing for 8-15 minutes. At the assembly stage, you can put gifts inside the house - gingerbread, sweets.
12. The finished house is sprinkled with "snow" - powdered sugar or coconut flakes.
In such a beautiful palace it will be cozy and playful...
and real princesses:
In this photo, the children are not too surprised by the view of the wonderful gingerbread palace,
because took an active part in its construction.
And each of them brought their own creative idea of jewelry.
Therefore, their views are not so much enthusiastic as carefully evaluating the created work.
After taking pictures next to the palace, they will happily break it down, starting from the roof.
Of course, in the course of eating, you will have to put additional dolls in order to have enough for everyone.
View of the gingerbread palace from the back:
NOTE. Twisted gingerbread products (for example, elements of the walls of the round towers of the castle in the photo) are baked on round heat-resistant objects covered with cooking paper, lightly oiled (for example, on empty metal cans). Cut dough pieces 6-8 mm thick are laid out on top in 1/4 turn, but not more than 1/3 turn. At 1/2 turn, the gingerbread dough will drip off during baking.
How to glue baked gingerbread elements into an intricate building - see above.
:
For test:
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1 cup of sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp dry ground garlic
- 1 cup sugar syrup (recipe below)
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vinegar
- about 5 cups of flour (until you get a thick dough)
Sugar Syrup Ingredients:
- 200 g sugar
– 200 g honey
- 70 g butter
- 1/3 cup boiling water
Glaze Ingredients:
- 1 egg white
- about 1 cup icing sugar (until you get a thick mixture)
- a little lemon juice or citric acid
Ingredients for caramel glue:
- 100 g sugar
- 2 tbsp. tablespoons of water (and boil everything until thick)
1. Prepare sugar syrup. In a metal saucepan, melt 3 tbsp. sugar until brown. Remove from heat and cool slightly while stirring. Pour in 1/3 cup boiling water, stir well, add the rest of the sugar, and put on fire. Bring to a boil and until the sugar is completely dissolved.
2. In a very large saucepan, beat the margarine with a mixer. Add sugar, baking powder, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon and garlic. Keep whisking well.
3. Gradually pour in the sugar syrup, while continuing to beat, beat in the eggs and vinegar. Beat until a homogeneous mass is formed. Start adding flour while continuing to beat with the mixer until the mixer can turn the dough. Dust a work surface with flour, place the dough on it and continue kneading with your hands. The dough should be very thick. Divide into thirds, cover and refrigerate for 3 hours.
4. Now divide each piece of dough in half again (you will get six pieces). Spread baking paper on a baking sheet, put a piece of dough on it, knead it first with your hands. Then cover the dough with a second sheet of paper and roll it out with a rolling pin into a layer 3 mm thick. Remove the top sheet, put the pattern of the house on top and cut it into shape. The scraps can then be used for small decorations, figurines, gingerbread men, etc.
5. Bake in preheated to 180 gr. C oven for 7-9 minutes until the edges are slightly browned. Cool down. Repeat with the rest of the dough pieces and pattern sheets.
6. While the dough is cooling, prepare the icing and caramel glue. Separate the protein from the yolk very carefully. Beat with a fork until light foam forms. Continue whisking, gradually adding powdered sugar until the volume increases and the consistency of thick sour cream is obtained.
7. When the dough has cooled well, remove it from the pan. We will paint each individual wall with glaze. On the roof, until the glaze has hardened, you can stick waffles or sweets imitating tiles.
8. Now we are preparing caramel glue. Caramel glue is actually the same sugar syrup (which we prepared above), but more concentrated and without honey and oil.
9. Until the caramel glue has hardened (it can be kept on a saucepan with steaming water), we dip the edges of the walls of the house into it, which we need to glue together. When the walls are glued, and the house is already on the table, in order to glue the roof, we grease the upper cut of the walls with caramel glue and put the roof on. We cover the seams with glaze.
NOTE. Rounded gingerbread blanks (for example, for the walls of a round tower) are baked with a size of no more than 1/3 of a turn, laid during baking on round heat-resistant forms of the desired diameter.
When the size of the workpiece is more than 1/3 of a turn, during baking, the gingerbread dough inevitably runs off and its predetermined shape is distorted.
Optimal baking of rounded parts in 1/4 turn - in this case, during baking, a layer of gingerbread dough laid on it from a cylindrical shape is excluded.
:
For test:
- 350 g flour
- 130 g butter
- 2 yolks
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp ginger
- 0.5 tsp soda
- 100 g sugar
- 4 tablespoons honey
- salt
For icing sugar:
- 250 g of powdered sugar
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 protein
The most important thing is to make the correct template (drawing) of the house according to your imagination.
It is better to make it out of cardboard and then assemble it to fit it exactly.
When you have your template ready, transfer all patterns onto baking paper.
Now we prepare the dough: mix flour with spices, salt and soda. Then add soft butter and grind into crumbs.
Beat the yolks with a fork and pour into the dough, immediately add sugar and honey.
Knead a tight dough, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for an hour. Then we roll out into a layer (I got 4) part of the dough and bake until golden brown and while the cake is soft, cut out the details of our house and one cake for the stand according to the templates (our composition will stand on it), and you can cut out cookies from the leftovers.
IT IS NECESSARY TO DO IT QUICKLY, BECAUSE COOLING, BECOMES HARD AND MAY CRASH.
When all the details are ready and cooled down, we combine them with icing sugar, i.e. we are building a house. Then we decorate as we like.
The dough in the recipe is enough for a small house and 10 cookies.
If you increase the proportions of the dough, making it larger, you can build a big house, and put a cake inside, a small one on a stand can be used to decorate the cake or let the children gobble it up.
Features of this test, unlike honey for houses, are that it does not get stale for a long time.
TIP: DO NOT ROLL OUT THE DOUGH TOO THIN, THE IDEAL THICKNESS IS 0.5 CM!
For icing sugar Thoroughly grind everything with a wooden spoon until a thick homogeneous mass is obtained.
Paint each baked part, dry the icing well and only then glue it.
After gluing and curing the joints, make a finish: masking the seams, applying "icicles", imitation of snow, etc.
Like gingerbread houses, sleighs are glued together with sugar-protein drawing mass (icing) or hot thickly boiled sugar icing, or hard chocolate (black or white) melted in a water bath.
Painted gingerbread figures to decorate gingerbread compositions or to serve with tea. Such figurines are cut out of a layer of dough with a knife using a cardboard template, then baked and decorated with icing.
Children's creativity - gingerbread decoration for the Christmas tree:
Sleigh options:
In some countries, various sets of ready-made parts are sold for self-assembly of gingerbread compositions. This house is assembled from the following set:
FINNISH gingerbread house wall template
FINNISH gingerbread house roof template
Gingerbread Tree Template
GINGERBOOK MAN TEMPLATE
:
For the gingerbread dough:
- 140 g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- 100 g sugar
– 1 egg
- 1 tsp soda
- 100 ml of light molasses (golden syrup) or, even better, fructose syrup
- 1 tsp ground cardamom seeds (you need to grind the seeds from two pods in a mortar)
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp grated orange peel
- 450 g plain flour
NOTE. Instead of all the spices, you can add ginger - then you get a ginger house.
For glaze:
- 400 g powdered sugar, sifted
- 2 egg whites
- 2 tsp lemon juice
For decoration:
- 4-5 orange or yellow icicles crushed with a rolling pin
– 3 packs of Smarties (colorful chocolates)
- 400 g marshmallows or marshmallows
And:
- you will need a board on which you will build a house,
- four trays
- and a few clean jars or bottles with which you can prop up the still-dry glued walls of the house and other structural elements so that they do not fall apart.
- Cookie cutters in the shape of trees and little men for baking figured products from gingerbread dough that decorate the composition will also come in handy.
NOTES.
- For cutting parts, be sure to use pre-prepared templates, otherwise the walls of the house will not fit together.
- Choose the design of the house and decorate the house the way you want - you can make a multi-colored scale using only white icing, like snow.
In a cool, dry place, the house can be stored for up to 2 weeks.
PRELIMINARY BY YOUR IMAGINATION TO DEVELOP AND CUT TEMPLATES FOR THE gingerbread house.
In the wall templates, provide openings for windows and doors, which we will then fill with crushed candies and fuse them in the oven.
Step 1. First, make the Finnish gingerbread dough. Put the butter and 50 g of sugar in a bowl, beat with an electric mixer.
Step 2 Beat the egg with the remaining 50 g of sugar until it resembles lightly whipped cream.
Add soda and molasses to the oil. Then add egg mixture.
Add spices, orange zest and flour, and mix until you have an elastic soft dough.
Form into a ball, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Step 3 While the dough is chilling, cut out templates from parchment or baking paper based on your templates.
Preheat oven to 220 gr. WITH.
Step 4 Line four baking sheets with parchment.
Tear off an orange-sized piece from the dough. Roll it out on a floured table to the thickness of a coin and cut out the wall.
Roll out the scraps and gradually roll out and cut out the remaining parts of the house.
Using a spatula, transfer them to a baking sheet.
You will need to cut out two side walls, a front and a back wall, two roof pieces and four pieces for the chimney (the bottom walls of the pipe should be in the shape of a triangle so that the sharp part goes into the hole in the roof).
Cut out trees and people from dough.
Step 5 Roll out the remaining dough and scraps directly on the parchment and cut into an oval about 25 cm in size. This is the "garden" on which the house will stand.
Place on parchment on a baking sheet.
Step 6 Cut a door into one of the walls, then cut windows where you want.
Cover window and door openings with an even layer of crushed candy.
Bake the cookies in batches for 6 to 8 minutes (garden bakes a few minutes longer) until the edges of the cookies are brown and the candies are melted.
For a perfectly shaped cookie, attach templates to it and cut off any places where the cookie has spread.
Let cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.
Step 7 While the cookies are cooling, make the frosting by mixing the icing sugar with the egg white and lemon juice.
This is the "glue" with which we will connect the walls and decorate the house.
Step 8 Now get the board for the house and put the banks on which you can rely on the glued walls.
Transfer the icing to a piping bag fitted with a very small tip, or place in a plastic bag and cut off the small tip at the corner.
Starting with a small wall, squeeze a thin strip of glaze along the bottom edge and attach it to the "ground".
Press it firmly against the board for a few minutes, and then prop it up with a jar until the icing hardens.
Step 9 Lubricate the lower part of the long wall with glaze, place on the lower part of the house and press firmly until it gets stronger.
Then put up two other walls.
Step 10 Attach roof. Pass the glaze over the corners of one part of the roof and the upper edges of the walls, attach the lid to the walls and press firmly.
Put a jar to support the roof.
Repeat with the second part of the roof.
Connect all the pieces for the pipe and attach to the icing on the roof.
Step 11 Spread the icing over the surface of the roof and chimney, dripping the icing onto the walls to create a snowy effect. Then put smarties on top. Smear with glaze "garden" and draw facial features. Attach white marshmallows to the icing all around the garden to create a fence.
Place people and trees everywhere.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Step 12 Put the finished gingerbread house in a prominent place and admire it for a long time, show it to all your friends and acquaintances.
:
– 1 cup flour (flour should always be sifted before kneading any dough)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon of grated ginger root (our gingerbread will turn out spicy and spicy, you can take less ginger to taste)
- 2 tablespoons softened butter
- 1 tablespoon liquid honey
- 1 tablespoon of milk
1. PREPARING THE DOUGH.
Mix all ingredients.
Knead the dough thoroughly with your hands for about 10 minutes so that it becomes elastic - this is the main thing in preparing any gingerbread dough.
Roll into a ball and leave to lie down for 10-15 minutes, but no more.
2. TEMPLATES FOR MINI-HOUSE.
For the house you will need 6 templates:
- 2 for the roof,
– 2 for front and rear facades,
– 2 for end walls.
Draw patterns on thick paper and cut them out with scissors.
If you want to make houses with windows (with empty holes or filled with candy, marmalade), provide them on the templates.
3. CUTTING DETAILS.
Roll out the dough into a layer 5 mm thick and circle around the contour with a sharp knife or, which is much more convenient when cutting the dough, use pizza roller cutter.
To facilitate subsequent assembly (so that the roof does not move out when gluing), you can make two small holes for threads in both parts of the roof before baking.
When assembling, the baked parts of the roof are simply tied with a thread.
After the adhesive glaze has hardened, remove the threads and close these technological holes in the roof with glaze.
BAKING DETAILS.
Bake the details of the house in a pre-heated oven at a temperature of 170 gr. From about 7 min.
Then let cool completely under a folded towel.
To cut the dough in narrow places, you can successfully use a screwdriver.
The tradition of making gingerbread houses began in Germany in 1812. Then the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm "Hansel and Gretel" was published. Readers really liked the appetizing gingerbread house that lost children came across. That is why its analogues soon became an invariable attribute of Christmas and New Year's fairs.
The beauty of this festive treat is that, thanks to the spices, it can be stored for several weeks. And it is the spices that give it a special New Year's flavor.
Ground ginger and cinnamon are essential ingredients. But other seasonings can also be used. For example, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver sometimes adds some nutmeg and ground cloves to the dough.
Although the dough is stored for a long time, nevertheless, over time, the house will begin to get stale, so you should not delay the tasting too much. Moreover, it will be quite difficult to resist.
Ingredients
- 220 g butter;
- 250 g sugar;
- 2 large eggs;
- 400 g of liquid honey;
- 700 g flour;
- 1 teaspoon of soda;
- ½ teaspoon baking powder;
- 4 teaspoons ground ginger;
- 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon;
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt.
Cooking
In one bowl, mix butter and sugar. Then add the eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. Pour in honey and mix well.
In another bowl, combine all dry ingredients and transfer the mixture to the first bowl. Knead the dough, wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for a couple of hours.
Shutterfly.com
This amount of dough is enough for an average house 20 × 10 × 20 cm.
How to build a gingerbread house
This is the most difficult, but at the same time the most interesting part. It is best to build and decorate a house together with loved ones. So you will have a great opportunity to spend time together and develop creative abilities.
First you need to make a house template. You can draw it yourself or choose from ready-made ones. For example, download , or .
Roll out the dough into a large layer 0.5-0.7 cm thick, put templates on it and cut out the necessary details. It is best to roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment. So it won't really stick to anything.
shutterfly.com At this stage, if desired, you can cut out additional windows and a door in the dough. And from the leftovers, you can make Christmas trees “growing” next to the house, build a chimney or bake.
Carefully transfer the parchment with the details to a baking sheet and place in an oven preheated to 180 ° C for 12-15 minutes. The dough is baked if it has hardened and turned dark brown around the edges. Allow the parts to cool before building the house.
At this time, prepare the protein glaze: it is needed to hold the walls and roof together and for decoration. Beat 3 egg whites with a mixer until foamy. Then, without stopping beating, gradually add 500 g of powdered sugar to the proteins. You should have a thick white frosting of a uniform consistency.
Prepare a beautiful stand on which the gingerbread house will stand. After gluing, it can no longer be transferred.
Then, using the glaze, glue the pieces to the stand and to each other. The easiest way to do this is to place the icing in a pastry bag, piping bag, or regular plastic bag with a small hole in the corner. When building a house, the walls need to be supported with some improvised means so that they stand evenly.
The rest of the frosting will come in handy for decorating.
Details can be decorated even before you put them together. Especially if you decide to build a large or custom house. But if you make it according to the patterns presented above, you can decorate the finished product.
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Photo gallery: Making your own gingerbread house for Christmas, a unique recipe
Today we will learn how to bake a gingerbread house at home. Our recipe with photos will reveal the secrets of how to properly prepare gingerbread dough and make fabulous Christmas decor.
Making your own gingerbread house - little tricks
These little tricks will help you properly prepare real gingerbread custard dough:
- it is cooked on honey and without the addition of sugar, molasses;
- do not use artificial baking powder. Vodka / cognac / rum should be added to the dough (4 tablespoons per 1 kilogram of flour);
- you can not use margarine or vegetable oil instead of butter;
- to achieve the best result in the preparation of gingerbread dough, use low-grade flour;
- be sure to use spices for gingerbread (dry perfume), which are easy to prepare at home. In a blender, grind coriander seeds (1 tsp) + cinnamon (1 tsp) + cardamom seeds (0.5 tsp) + nutmeg (1/3 tsp) + cloves (2-3 pcs.) + star anise seeds (1/3 tsp) + allspice (4-5 pcs.) + dry ginger (1/3 tsp). For 1 kilogram of dough, 1-2 tsp are used. dry perfume;
- do not bake gingerbread dough for too long;
- next to the gingerbread, it is recommended to put a few pieces of fresh apple. So they retain their aroma longer and do not become stale;
- if you use light honey, the dough can be tinted with cocoa powder to achieve a dark gingerbread shade;
- at the exit, the dough turns out to be quite plastic; it should not stick to the table, but only a little to the hands; do not knead too steep dough, as it will not rise during baking, and the gingerbread cookies will turn out hard; very thin dough will spread and the gingerbread will lose its shape;
- gingerbread based on raw dough becomes hard and dries out faster than gingerbread made from choux pastry.
DIY gingerbread house, recipe with step by step photos
Required Ingredients
Using a measuring cup = 250 milliliters
Dough:
- Wheat flour (w / s) - 3 cups,
- Natural honey - ¾ cup,
- Butter 72% -82% - 100 grams,
- Sour cream 26% - 100 grams,
- Vodka / cognac / rum - 3 tbsp. spoons,
- Spices for gingerbread (dry perfume) - ¾ teaspoon,
- Chicken egg (D-1) - 1 piece,
- Drinking water - ¼ cup
Glaze (icing):
- Chicken egg protein (D-0) - 1 piece,
- Powdered sugar - 150 - 200 grams.
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