Baker’s
Helpful
Hints
The gingerbread house
became popular in
Germany after the
Brothers Grimm published their fairy tale
collection which included "Hansel and Gretel" in
the 19th century. Early German settlers brought
this lebkuchenhaeusle - gingerbread house tradition to the Americas.
In 2010 NHSPhoenix started the Home Sweet Home benefit to
promote awareness of our various housing programs.
We’ve put together this Helpful Hints page to help baker’s create their
masterpieces. In lieu of trying to provide complete instructions that are already out
there we’ve selected a few tidbits and links to help. Here’s a good simple recipe. If
you need instructions on rolling out and cutting up the
dough, About.com has an east European food section with
complete step by step instructions. Even a pattern is
provided, but I’m sure you can come up with something
much more creative than their basic
pattern. Creating the pattern is a
key element. I suggest creating
every face of the house with a piece
of (graph) paper as if you could
assemble the paper templates into the house you envision.
Then you can roll out your dough, lay the paper template on
dough and cut it out.
Structural Gingerbread Recipe
http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/crossculturaldesserts/r/gingerbread.htm
While edible, this gingerbread house dough recipe is "structural." It has no leaveners that would make it puff up and distort the
shapes and its firm so it can support lots of decorations. There are a number of other gingerbread recipes online.
This recipe is economical. It uses no expensive spices and has only five ingredients. Kids can use their hands to smoosh the
dough together. Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before rolling. It's a
good idea to bake the pieces one day and assemble the next day.
Prep Time: 15 minutes --- Cook Time: 20 minutes ---- Total Time: 35 minutes
Ingredients:
• 2 cups light corn syrup (or dark corn syrup for a darker house)
•
•
•
•
1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar (or dark brown sugar for a darker house)
1 1/4 cups margarine
9 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preparation:
Note: This recipe can easily be increased, if you want to make it a project for several kids by doubling or even tripling the
ingredients. Instead of measuring out the flour, for a double recipe, use 1 (5-pound) bag plus 1 cup flour. For a triple recipe, use
two (5-pound) bags plus 2 cups flour.
1. In a medium microwave-safe bowl, heat corn syrup, brown sugar and margarine until margarine has melted and sugar has
dissolved completely. Stir until smooth.
2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Add syrup-sugar-margarine mixture, making sure it's cool enough for
the kids to squish the dough until it's smooth and comes away from the sides of the bowl.
3. Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest at least 30 minutes at room temperature. This is a good time to wash up the
dishes and get your baking pans, rolling pin and pattern pieces ready.
4. If the dough is too hard or unmanageable, you can microwave it for 20-30 seconds. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll out
the dough 1/4-inch thick onto a sheet of parchment cut to fit your baking pan. Edgeless pans or those with only one edge
are the best. View these steps for rolling and cutting gingerbread.
5. Lightly flour the cardboard patterns and place them on the rolled-out dough, leaving a 1-inch space between pieces. Try to
fit as many as you can without crowding. For clean edges, cut with a pizza wheel. Remove and reserve excess dough.
6. Grab the opposite edges of the parchment paper and transfer to the baking sheet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until pieces
are firm and lightly browned around the edges. Cool completely before removing from pans. Reroll dough scraps for the
remainder of the pieces. View these steps for assembling a gingerbread house and these steps for decorating a
gingerbread house.
Please Note: While this recipe contains no spices, adding spices will make your dough emit that wonderful seasonal odor
(particularly when baking, making the task so much more fun). Suggested spice addition: ! tablespoon cinnamon, 2 teaspoons
ginger, 1 teaspoon cloves. Mixing these ingredients into the flour before adding liquids will give your cookies a darker richer
color. Also to enhance color you can use dark brown sugar.
Textures:
NHSP CEO Patricia Garcia-Duarte found special plastic template sheets at Michaels. With this template
sheet she was able to roll out dough, then roll the special sheet pressing down into the dough making an
the impressions of a brick pattern. The end result gave her Gingerbread walls a textural appearance of
bricks and looked very professional. The kit also included a sheet to simulate stone and wood patterns.
Patricia used a standard gingerbread dough, it’s suspected that the structural dough recipe (which is
sans leaveners) will hold impressions even better than Patricia’s success.
How to make integral candy-glass windows
I recommend using a silicone sillpat for this trick. These silicone sheets are available in many stores and
very helpful baking any cookie, but they make this process much easier to accomplish. Place rolled
dough on sillpat and cut out the wall piece including cut out the window. Using your kitchen hammer
break up your rock candy* and put the crumbles into window. Bake. When pulling out of oven be sure
to let cool to room temperature before trying to pick up cookie. Also note, too much hard candy will
cause it to bubble over and onto surface of gingerbread. Too little and you won’t have enough candy to
make the window solid. So use a close guessing eye and don’t over bake.
*Jolly Rancher candies work great, however their a little light in pigment – ie their color is a bit pastel or
light. For “red” use the standard hard candy cinnamon disk. For “yellow” use a standard butterscotch
hard candy. Also “Lifesavers” will work. The white peppermint (or similar colored swirled hard candy)
can also be used and get a frosted window effect with hints of red.
Royal Icing Recipe
This is a grease free icing used to hold the various parts of your gingerbread house together. And it’s a
nice pure white like snow, helping add the seasonal flavor. It’s a great glue for adhering candies together
and onto your house. For some mixers it takes a long time to get the icing stiff enough, just keep
whipping until stiff peaks form when you pull the beaters out. Some stores will have Royal icing “mix”
all prepared for you to just add water, but seriously it’s only two ingredients, save your money and DIY.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Meringue Powder*
4 cups (about 1 lb.) confectioners' sugar
6 tablespoons warm water
Makes:
About 3 cups of icing.
Instructions:
Step 1 – Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavyduty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer).
Step 2 Keep all utensils completely grease-free for proper icing consistency.
* Meringue Powder may be purchased at ABC Cakes, 2853 E Indian School Rd or some JC Penny
stores carry it.
**When using large countertop mixer or for stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.
It’s almost impossible to over whip. Once your royal icing is mixed be sure to keep a damp towel over
the bowl because it dries quick, and crusts will form if you leave it
open to air. Royal icing has the unique ability to hang when wet
and dry, making it easy to “drip” off the roof like snow or hang a
garland off roof. If planning ahead, you can also pipe-out your
icing onto wax paper to make
vertical trellis structures or whatever your imagination can create.
Simply draw out your design, lay the wax paper on top so you can see
drawing. Pipe icing over your pattern. Let dry for several days. To
remove delicately slide a spatula up to one edge and “pull paper off
the icing from below” while scooping up icing onto spatula. It’s
delicate but easy, so remember there may be breakage. If you want 2
trellises make 4-6 icing pieces.
Roofing Materials
Roof treatments are a quandary for every baker. Since we always end up “looking down” on these
creations the Roof becomes a major element and it feels a little naked without some ornamentation.
The key is be creative. When attempting to recreate the essence of shingles, the most historically used
candy is the “necco wafers.” But we see many creative applications since some used elements include:
shredded wheat , chex, gum sticks, skittles, m&m’s, fruit rollups (unrolled) & pretzels. Be creative you
can use other precooked items like graham crackers – or any cracker that creates the image you’re
creating. One thing to remember, sometimes roofs are larger than they appear, in one case, Ms. Duarte
decided almond slivers would make a nice shingle appearance. And they did look beautiful when she
finally got the entire roof covered at 4am. The moral being look at the scale you’re covering while the
almonds looked exquisite, the time they consumed made them exhausting. Have fun with it do not let
your creation become too tedious for you – enjoy & creativity will flow like icing out of pastry bag – even
if some comes out the back.
Specialty Candy stores
ABC Cake Decorating Supplies, 2853 E Indian School Rd
ABC has meringue powder, necco wafers, and lots of odd candies, and plastic knick-knacks for any
theme. Also they supply the hardware tools of the trade, cookie sheets, silpat, spatulas, pastry
bags – staff are very helpful and they do offer classes of various sorts.
Smeeks – 148j, 2502 E Camelback Rd
McAlpines Soda Fountain - 2303 N 7th St, Phoenix
Sweeties Candy of Arizona - 1050 W Chandler Blvd, Chandler
Candy Addict - 414 S Mill Ave, Tempe
Rocket Fizz - 13681 N Litchfield Rd, Surprise
IT'SUGAR - 21001 N Tatum Blvd, Phoenix
Churn - 5223 N. Central Ave, Phoenix
Assembly Hints:
To hold your wall panels up will icing the edges together, I recommend using a pair of drinking glasses or
heavy food cans, one on each side gently holding the piece in place is often more stable than another
person holding on.
Be sure your gingerbreads have had time to dry. Some less structural gingerbread recipes need to dry
out well before attempting to assemble. Since consumption is not the goal freshness is not a critical
issue bake well in advance of your construction date.
Virgina Senor of Urban Beans wished to remind everyone that you can glue/adhere you gingerbread
house. Panels once then, after dried and holding together. You can go back and put a neat and tidy
bead or decorative pattern up the seam to provide a nice looking seam.
Conclusion:
This is supposed to be a fun fundraiser and creation of these houses should not over burden oneself.
This document of Helpful Hints is produced to help you. Suggestions or new hints are welcome. Also, if
you encounter a good novelty candy store please notify us se we can add it to this resource to share
with other gingerbread house bakers.