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 embraced this tradition to symbolize of our
housing advocacy and started Home Sweet Home a 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. Below is a good
simple recipe. If you need instructions on rolling out and
cutting up the dough, follow the links below where they have
step by step instructions. Even a pattern is provided, but I’d
like to encourage you to use your
creativity and come up with your
own! Creating the pattern is a key
element. I suggest creating each
face of your house with a piece of
graph paper as if you could assemble the paper templates
into the house you envision. Next, roll out your dough, lay
the paper template on dough and cut the dough out and bake.
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:
There are great templates available to add texture to your gingerbread house. NHSP CEO Patricia GarciaDuarte found special plastic template sheets at Michaels. With this template sheet she was able to roll out
dough, and then roll the special sheet pressing down into the dough creating 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 the standard
gingerbread dough, but I would bet that these textures will show the impressions more distinctly by using
the above Structural Gingerbread Recipe. Patricia’s dough recipe included leaveners which causes the
dough to expand when baked, reducing the depth of the template’s impressions.
Integral candy-glass windows
Windows are always a detail hard to decorate. However, this technique allows you to integrally bake in the
windows with shiny transparent candy. I recommend using a silicone sillpat secret to making such ornate
windows. These silicone sheets are available in many stores and very helpful baking any cookie, but they
make this process much easier to accomplish. Roll dough out onto the sillpat sheet. Place template on
dough and cut out the wall piece including cut out the window. Using your kitchen hammer break up your
rock candy* and place pieces in window. Bake the time required for the cookie dough, the candy will
liquefy and flow out to fill in window. Once out of oven, let cool to room temperature before trying to pick
up cookie. Also note, either over baking and/or too much hard candy can cause candy 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. With experience it gets easier, patience is necessary, assume
you’ll have a failed attempt or two. A trim of icing around the window will add that fine detail, a window
frame, and more importantly allows you to cover the edge producing a clean crisp line.
*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 icing, helping to add seasonal flavor. It’s a great glue for adhering candies together
and onto your house. For some (hand) 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 sell 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 heavy-duty
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 also 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 quickly, 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 icing 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 while 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 together once, just to get them to hold. Then come back after the royal icing has dried and you can
then put a neat and tidy bead or decorative pattern up the seam to provide a nice looking finished edge.
Conclusion:
This is supposed to be a FUNdraiser. 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. I’d like to thank you for donating your skills, so that more clients can attain their
dream of home ownership and have their own Home Sweet Home.
Have a great Bake,
Dana Johnson
NHS Phoenix Board member